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Common threats to primate species include deforestation, forest fragmentation, monkey drives (resulting from primate crop raiding), [219] and primate hunting for use in medicines, as pets, and for food. Large-scale tropical forest clearing is widely regarded as the process that most threatens primates.
Linnaeus's inclusion of humans in the primates with monkeys and apes was troubling for people who denied a close relationship between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. Linnaeus's Lutheran archbishop had accused him of "impiety". In a letter to Johann Georg Gmelin dated 25 February 1747, Linnaeus wrote:
The monkey's size differs depending on sex and species. Males from all species can range from 41 to 70 cm (16 to 28 inches) in head and body length, and in weight from 5.5 to 18 kg (12.13 to 39.7 lb). [ 6 ]
Worldwide, it is thought that between 100,000 and 200,000 non-human primates are used in research each year, [67] 64.7% of which are Old World monkeys, and 5.5% New World monkeys. [68] This number makes a very small fraction of all animals used in research. [ 67 ]
New World monkeys are small to mid-sized primates, ranging from the pygmy marmoset (the world's smallest monkey), at 14 to 16 cm (5.5 to 6.5 in) and a weight of 120 to 190 g (4.2 to 6.7 oz), to the southern muriqui, at 55 to 70 cm (22 to 28 in) and a weight of 12 to 15 kg (26 to 33 lb).
The New World monkeys in parvorder Platyrrhini split from the rest of the simian line about 40 million years ago (mya), leaving the parvorder Catarrhini occupying the Old World. This latter group split about 25 mya between the Cercopithecidae and the apes, making Cercopithecidae more closely related to the apes than to the Platyrrhini.
Old World monkeys are primates in the family Cercopithecidae (/ ˌ s ɜːr k oʊ p ɪ ˈ θ ɛ s ɪ d iː /). Twenty-four genera and 138 species are recognized, making it the largest primate family. Old World monkey genera include baboons (genus Papio), red colobus (genus Piliocolobus), and macaques (genus Macaca).
Formerly the bonobo was known as the "pygmy chimpanzee", despite the bonobo having a similar body size to the common chimpanzee. The name "pygmy" was given by the German zoologist Ernst Schwarz in 1929, who classified the species on the basis of a previously mislabeled bonobo cranium, noting its diminutive size compared to chimpanzee skulls.