Hands of Primates

Holger Preuschoft

The hand commonly is considered to have exerted great influence on the evolution of typically human features, like upright posture, stereoscopic vision, "manipulative" handling of parts of the environment. The hands of the other primates are not less closely related to the necessities of life than in humans. But beyond this general statement, only few satisfying and precise analyses of their functions exist. Most considerations begin and end up with Napier ́s discrimination and definition of power grip and precision grip - which has turned out to be very useful in surgery - and the restating of man ́s distinctiveness. The characteristic features of the human hand are to a large extent shared by the hands of other primates, and therefore it seems logical to approach the human hand by looking into the details of hand function and hand morphology in non-human primates. This book presents...