Primates

Step 1: Go to college. Go to the best school you can find that has a good program in Biological Anthropology or Animal Behavior. You may also find primatological opportunities in Evolutionary Biology, Ecology, and Psychology departments. Most primatologists, however, are to be found in Anthro departments. Some places that have good primatologists are Harvard, Yale, UMN, Emory, Ann Arbor, UC Davis, Duke, UIUC, and SUNY Stony Brook, to name a very few.

Step 2: Get field experience. If your college has grants to fund undergraduate research, then great--develop an independent project with a field primatologist you've taken classes with. If this isn't an option for whatever reason, check out http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/jobs for some of the main field sites out there looking for people to do volunteer fieldwork. Emailing people who are doing interesting research and offering them free labor (or nearly free labor) as a field assistant has worked for folks before, too. This step is important, both because it helps you make sure you want to study monkeys as a career and because it's hard to get into grad school without it.

Step 3: Go to Grad School. From here you can either go the academia route or the conservation route; it depends. Do a lot of research. Apply for a lot of grants. Get a PhD, publish as much as you can, and pray that your funding holds out. With luck, you'll get a job in primatology after graduating, and can continue to do field work from there--building this kind of a career is a skill best learned by doing.

Keep in mind that primatology, while oftentimes amazing and fulfilling, are also filled with substantial amounts of tedium, living in third world countries, and primate poo. And the pay sucks. What's more, to make a career out of primatology, you need to be interested in being a good scientist. If you just want to watch monkeys play because they're cute, get a job at a zoo or sanctuary. People don't become primatologists because it's glamorous and every instant is filled with adorably monkey babies. People become primatologists because they love walking around in the woods watching monkeys and trying to figure out why in the world they act the way they do. The pay sucks, its messy and often boring, there's next to no funding for research, and other biologists won't take you seriously. You have to find primates fascinating on a fundamental intellectual level or you won't last.

Humans are primates, and thus have all the defining characteristics for the clade of Primates along with the defining characteristics that are unique to Hominoidea (apes) and humans.

The key characteristics that make primates primates are:

• that primates are mammals, and thus have all the defining characteristics for the clade of Mammalia, except for the following:
• they have shorter snouts than most mammals
• they have different types of teeth: incisors, canines, molars, reflecting an omnivore's diet
• they have forward facing eye sockets, emphasizing sight (and depth perception)
• they have collarbones, aiding free motion of the arms
• they have radius and ulna, two bones in the forearm as well as the lower leg, aiding precision of movement
• they have nails in stead of claws
• they have increased thumb mobility compared to the other mammals
• they have grasping feet (this feature has decreased somewhat in humans, but is still apparent from our morphology)
• they tend towards a vertical posture
• forelimbs and hindlimbs are used differently
• they live longer than most other mammals, and appear newborn/young longer (other mammals have relatively short periods of 'childhood')
• they have larger brains than most other mammals
• they have reduced olfactory capabilities compared to most other mammals

So any clade that is part of the clade of Primates (such as the clade of Apes and our own species, humans) will share all of these features to some extent - although they may have been slightly modified over the generations:

• we've lost our tails (along with all other apes)
• we've grown increasingly large brains, compared to the other primates
• we (along with all other apes) have five cusps on our molars
• our arms are shorter and weaker
• our toes have shrunk and the 'thumb' has aligned with the other toes
• our feet have lengthened and formed an arch
• our legs have lengthened and grown stronger relatively to our arms
• we've lost most body hair, compared to the other apes, and the other primates
• our lower jaw juts forward, compared to the other apes and primates; this is accompanied by a virtually flat face and a high forehead

No primate can see infrared at any time. There are very few creatures that can see infrared as it cannot be focused with a biological produced lens (due to the water that will be present, which absorbs infrared), so a type of eye based on the pinhole camera must be used by these few creatures.

The only creatures that I am aware of that can see infrared are the snakes known as pit vipers. They are called pit vipers because their pair of infrared "eyes" look like tiny pits in their face.