# Do you include apes when you think of "Monkeys"? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 8, 2020, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146 "2020-01-08T23:09:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2020, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/41 "2020-01-09T19:55:29Z")
The Barbary macaque also called the Barbary Ape is a problem in a way. No tails and they are true monkeys anyway. It is not actually wrong to call an ape a monkey, but it really isn’t right either. It is dated and scientifically incorrect now. On the other hand, the apes won’t take offense except for those human type apes. ---
**Author:** ![Trancephalic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trancephalic/32/380_2.png) [@Trancephalic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trancephalic)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2020, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/42 "2020-01-09T20:08:16Z")
“True monkey” makes as much sense as a true scotsman ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2020, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/43 "2020-01-09T21:13:13Z")
I once got curious about this very question. It was triggered by my Swiss friend who mentioned that the students in his HS called the institution the Affenkasten, which he translated as monkey house. Since Affe is surely cognate with Ape, I got curious why didn’t he call it the ape house. It turns out there is no German word specifically for monkey. Nor is there a French word (My E/F dictionary translates ape as “grande singe sans queue” or large tailless monkey), nor a Spanish word, nor an Italian word. At that point I ran out of native informants. Moreover it turns out that the word monkey is a relatively new word in English of uncertain origin. As noted above the clade that includes both old and new world monkey also includes all apes. To put it another way, old world monkeys are more closely related to us than to new world monkeys. So although I have always made the distinction, it is clearly not very important. Correct me if I am wrong, but I have long believed that the most important distinction between monkeys and apes is the shoulder joint. Apes can raise the arms above their heads (and thereby brachiate, at least in principle) and monkeys cannot. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2020, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/44 "2020-01-09T22:49:52Z")
“Monkeys” calls to mind [small primates wearing silly uniforms](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=537L4EZynho&t=1m18s) and sometimes tiny hats. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/45 "2020-01-10T00:27:50Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > I think I saw a movie about his dotage, _The Madness of Curious George III_. That movie sounds like a real hoot, but I’d want to see the first two installments in the trilogy first. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/46 "2020-01-10T00:37:58Z")
> [@Trancephalic](#): > > “True monkey” makes as much sense as a true scotsman Some Scots may take offence at that. Our last cat answered to “You filthy monkey!” and she wasn’t even Scottish. She was too smart to go trainspotting. But I digress. Let’s go meta: Evolution is the survival of change over time. Nothing about improving or anything, just adapting to survive in whatever conditions you find yourself. People evolve socially when moving between rural and urban life or they get very lonely. Stellar objects evolve as energy levels change. Languages evolve as kids invent words and old fogies croak. Evolution is not biogenesis, a model of life’s beginnings on Terra. My FIL, a 6’5" Irish-American cop, called himself a “great ape”. I wouldn’t argue. Can I tell a great ape joke? A couple of old Brit sahibs, ex of the India service when the Empire stretched that far, were lounging in their London club, sipping port, puffing fine Havanas, and sharing old and new information. One said, “By the way, did you hear about old Smedley? Went native, he did! Ran off into the jungle! Took up with a rang-tang!” The other said, “My word! Er, was it a _female_ rang-tang?” The first said, “But of course, chap! Nothing queer about old Smedley!” ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/47 "2020-01-10T03:18:45Z")
I know chimpanzees are apes. I know apes are not monkeys. Thanks to decades of watching popular visual media, when I think of a monkey, I visualize a chimpanzee first and a capuchin monkey with a burgundy hat and vest and human cranking the handle on that music box thing second. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/48 "2020-01-10T05:22:09Z")
> [@RioRico](#): > > Some Scots may take offence at that. Only Fior Albannaich ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/49 "2020-01-10T06:45:56Z")
> [@Trancephalic](#): > > Either all primates are monkeys or none of them are. There are a lot of non-monkey primates. Lemurs, tarsiers, lorrises, pottos, bushbabies… ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/50 "2020-01-10T06:51:44Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I deliberately try to picture a gibbon any time someone says “ape,” just because I fell sorry for it. It’s the _only_ lesser ape. On the other hand, there are more extant species of gibbon than all the extant great ape species combined. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/51 "2020-01-10T13:26:22Z")
I went with the second answer, that they’re all monkeys. This based on learning that they are from a biological perspective, and being so happy I no longer had to remember the actual difference. But I’d say the way I naturally think about them is simply that the smaller ones (both in height and relative muscle size) are monkeys, and the larger ones are apes. Tails never mattered–I always thought of a chimpanzee as a monkey. Orangutans are right on the line–anything bigger is definitely an ape and anything smaller is definitely a monkey. The exception is the (relatively) hairless hominids, which I think of as hominids. I know that hominids are technically apes/primates, but I associate most animal words to imply non-human. The same goes for _mammal_,\* organism\*,\* vertebrate\*,\* eukaryote\*, and even the word _animal_ itself. Oh, and hominid implies not _Homo sapiens_. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/52 "2020-01-10T13:30:45Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > The exception is the (relatively) hairless hominids, which I think of as humans. You realise “hominids” is the [umbrella term](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae) for \*all \*the Great Apes, right? The term for our branch is “[hominins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominini)”. ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/53 "2020-01-10T13:54:00Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > The funny thing for me is that Afrikaans just uses “aap” for _all_ simians. Unsurprisingly, this also goes for Dutch. Does Afrikaans also have the word “mensaap” for a primate? That’s how it works in Dutch; any simian is an “aap”, and primates as a group are referred to as “mensapen”, that is “human monkeys/apes”, which is a rather wonderful term now that I analyze it. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/54 "2020-01-10T14:33:45Z")
Neither of the first two options is correct, so I went with the pie (because, seriously, pie). The first posits that apes and monkeys are distinct, and the second posits that they’re synonymous. But apes are a proper subset of monkeys. Depending on context, “ape” can refer to the great apes, or it can refer to all of the naturally-tailless monkeys, including both the great apes and the Barbary ape. Either way, all monkeys are primates, all apes are monkeys, and all Monkees are apes, but most apes are not Monkees, many monkeys are not apes, and many primates are not monkeys. (at first, there, I wrote “most monkeys are not apes”, but on reflection, that’s probably not true: The most numerous species of ape is probably more numerous than all other primates combined) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/55 "2020-01-10T15:03:04Z")
> [@PookahMacPhellimey](#): > > Does Afrikaans also have the word “mensaap” for a primate? No, primates are “opperdiere” (“higher animals”). There is “halfape” (half-monkeys) for the prosimians. And bushbabies (galagos) are “nagapies” (“little night monkeys”) ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/56 "2020-01-10T15:30:43Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Apes _are_ monkeys, AFAIAC, but not all primates are monkeys, hence I could not, in good conscience, vote for any of the choices given. I agree with this, but in the interests of going with what I thought the pollster was going for, I voted as a primate/monkey. > [@Chronos](#): > > Depending on context, “ape” can refer to the great apes, or it can refer to all of the naturally-tailless monkeys, including both the great apes and the Barbary ape. Err… 1) Barbary macaque, and 2) don’t you mean gibbons (the only extant apes not recognized as great apes)? ---
**Author:** ![Trancephalic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trancephalic/32/380_2.png) [@Trancephalic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trancephalic)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/57 "2020-01-10T15:46:33Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > There are a lot of non-monkey primates. Lemurs, tarsiers, lorrises, pottos, bushbabies… I’ve considered those monkeys. If you want to consider what falls just outside that umbrella, then there’s the colugos, and even then I’m not sure they don’t count. I draw a hard line at the glires, though. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/58 "2020-01-10T16:12:59Z")
> [@Trancephalic](#): > > I’ve considered those monkeys. You’ve considered wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/59 "2020-01-10T21:23:35Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I deliberately try to picture a gibbon any time someone says “ape,” just because I fell sorry for it. It’s the _only_ lesser ape. Every other ape gets to be a great ape, but the “lesser ape” category was invented just to put down the gibbon for not making nests. I’m sure they were greater before the decline and fall… I do distinguish between apes and monkeys- but then I also tend to distinguish between old and new world monkeys, so that’s no surprise. Some of us have to be anal about such things or where would the board be? ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2020, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146/60 "2020-01-11T04:25:49Z")
I don’t think of monkeys and apes as a cohesive grouping of animals, but then I’ve been fascinated by and more or less following paleoanthropology and primatology since my youth. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-include-apes-when-you-think-of-monkeys/846146.md?page=4)