![]() ![]() Fun fact: This type of movement is known as brachiation! While most monkeys are limited to leaping between tree, or scurrying along the tops of branches. Does it swing through the trees? Apes have greater mobility in their shoulder joints, so they can use their arms to gracefully swing from tree to tree. Gorillas far outweigh chimpanzees, and they are much taller as well. ![]() ![]() An easy way to remember this? Humans are apes, and we don’t have tails!Ģ. You can easily tell a chimpanzee from a gorilla based on their physical appearance and size. Does it have a tail? Most monkeys have a tail, but apes don’t. All you need to do is ask yourself three questions:ġ. For example, most monkeys have an easily visible tail, but no apes do, and while monkeys are physically built for a life in the trees, apes tend to be built for. So, how can you tell the difference? It’s not as confusing as you might think. They belong to two different groups of primates! Humans have evolved from the ape family, which includes gorilla, chimpanzees and orangutans. But the reality? Not only are they not the same animal. Difference between Man and Monkey Although, man and monkey share the same ancestry, they are actually very different. We all also show our emotions by using different facial expressions.īecause monkeys and apes have much in common, it’s easy to think they are the same animal. We all share forward-facing eyes for depth perception and flexible limbs to move between branches (who else has fond memories of the monkey bars?!). So I hold that Curious George is an ape, but I'll give the Reys a pass on using the catch-all term "monkey" because it would have been easily understood in the time and place they originally wrote the story of this adorable but trouble-making primate.Just like humans, monkeys and apes are primates and have evolved to live among trees. Given the details of the original Curious George book - his living in trees in Africa, his lack of a tail, his coloring and depiction, his opposable big toes and his inquisitive nature - I like to think of him as a juvenile chimpanzee. ![]() However, this species does not look particularly like the way George is illustrated, and it also tends to live in mountainous regions of northern Africa, not jungles. In order to reconcile George as a monkey in today's scientific parlance, he would have to be a Barbary macaque. To be sure, we'd have to pose this rather anachronistic question to the Reys, both now deceased. Unfortunately, this detour into taxonomic history doesn't really tell us whether Curious George is a monkey or an ape. When the Reys wrote Rafi et les Neuf Singes in 1939, then, the French term singes still likely meant "monkey and/or ape," even to relatively educated people. The genus Simia is still in use, though, most notably for the Barbary macaque. It wasn't until 1929 that the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature recommended no longer using the taxon Simia because it is "paraphyletic" (meaning: a confusing, catch-all term). Monkeys are smaller with more narrow chests and they have hair on their face. In the middle of the 18th century, then, there was no scientific distinction at the superfamily level between apes and monkeys as there is today. Apes are generally larger with wider chests and almost naked faces. (Arguably, it still is today.) The original scientific classification system, created by Carl Linnaeus, includes four genera under the order Primates: Homo (humans), Simia (monkeys and apes), Lemur (lemurs and colugos) and Vespertilio (bats). Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons all do not have tails making them apes Monkeys not only have tails, but are usually smaller in size compared. (Image in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons)Īt the time Curious George was created, the term "monkey" was common in general use to describe any number of primates. 1750) showing the genera Homo and Simia under the order. ![]()
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