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Mandrills and baboons are monkeys; the rest of the species on this list are apes. Typically, Old World monkeys (paleotropical) are larger than New World monkeys (neotropical); the reasons for this are not entirely understood but several hypotheses have been generated. [3]
There are two extant families: Hominidae, the "great apes"; and Hylobatidae, the gibbons, or "lesser apes". From left: Comparison of size of gibbon, human, chimpanzee, gorilla and orangutan. Non-human hominoids do not stand upright as their normal posture. The families, and extant genera and species of hominoids are: Superfamily Hominoidea [25]
Gigantopithecus (/ d ʒ aɪ ˌ ɡ æ n t oʊ p ɪ ˈ θ i k ə s, ˈ p ɪ θ ɪ k ə s, d ʒ ɪ-/ jy-gan-toh-pi-thee-kuhs, pith-i-kuhs, ji-; [2] lit. ' giant ape ') is an extinct genus of ape that lived in southern China from 2 million to approximately 300,000 to 200,000 years ago during the Early to Middle Pleistocene, represented by one species, Gigantopithecus blacki. [3]
The Hominidae (/ h ɒ ˈ m ɪ n ɪ d iː /), whose members are known as the great apes [note 1] or hominids (/ ˈ h ɒ m ɪ n ɪ d z /), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: Pongo (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); Gorilla (the eastern and western gorilla); Pan (the chimpanzee and the bonobo); and Homo, of which only modern humans ...
Comparison of size of adult chimpanzee and adult human. The chimpanzee is tailless; its coat is dark; its face, fingers, palms of the hands, and soles of the feet are hairless. The exposed skin of the face, hands, and feet varies from pink to very dark in both species, but is generally lighter in younger individuals and darkens with maturity.
While this was the first such observation for a gorilla, over 40 years previously, chimpanzees had been seen using tools in the wild 'fishing' for termites. Nonhuman great apes are endowed with semiprecision grips, and have been able to use both simple tools and even weapons, such as improvising a club from a convenient fallen branch.
The first great ape known to Western science in the 17th century was the "orang-outang" (genus Pongo), the local Malay name being recorded in Java by the Dutch physician Jacobus Bontius. In 1641, the Dutch anatomist Nicolaes Tulp applied the name to a chimpanzee or bonobo brought to the Netherlands from Angola. [ 13 ]
The Bornean orangutan is the third-largest ape after the western gorilla, and the largest truly arboreal (or tree-dwelling) extant ape. [8] [9] Body weights broadly overlap with the considerably taller Homo sapiens, but the latter is considerably more variable in size. [10]