# New world monkeys **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 6, 2020, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162 "2020-04-06T02:24:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/21 "2020-04-06T16:47:58Z")
I suppose some river like the Congo could have had a massive flood surge at some time. I don’t know how much of a boost in velocity this might have given to the raft. This is not an original idea. I’m pretty sure it’s from Stephen Baxter’s book _Evolution_. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/22 "2020-04-06T17:36:08Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I’ll guess that if they were lucky, enough rain could have fallen on the raft, and collected in puddles, to supplement the liquid in whatever they found to eat. The [Intertropical Convergence Zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertropical_Convergence_Zone) produces a seasonally shifting band of rainfall around the Earth. Potentially, it could produce heavy rains in Africa causing major rivers to flood at the same time it is producing a band of daily rainstorms stretching across the Atlantic. A raft could receive heavy rain every day during its transit, even over a period of months. > [@Chronos](#): > > And even if events like that are rare, it only needs to happen once. A one-in-a-million chance can happen multiple times if you have a period of 10 million years to play with. > [@Carryon](#): > > I just read that old world monkey are more closely related to apes, then they are to new world monkeys. > > Which brings all sorts of oddities, such as if this is indeed so then apes are a type of monkey and humans being apes would be included. Right. It used to be a favorite nit-pick to “correct” those who referred to apes as monkeys that this was inaccurate. However, it has turned out that both monkeys and apes are what is know as paraphyletic groups. Taxonomically speaking, there is no such thing as a “monkey” if you exclude apes, since Old World Monkeys are more closely related to the Great Apes than they are to New World Monkeys. Likewise, there is no such thing as a Great Ape if you exclude humans, since chimps are more closely related to humans than they are to orangutans. So apes are a kind of monkey, and humans are a kind of ape (and thus a monkey). This said, I don’t have a problem with having names for paraphyletic groups in informal use. People know what kind of animals you mean when you talk about monkeys and apes, and you can talk about “reptiles” even when you don’t include birds (which taxonomically are a kind of reptile). ---
**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:** [April 6, 2020, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/23 "2020-04-06T18:49:12Z")
In fact no other language I am at all familiar with (German, French, Spanish, Italian, not a very wide sample to be sure) has a separate word for ape and monkey. I once looked up ape in an English to French dictionary and it gave “grande singe sans queue” (literally big monkey without a tail). ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/24 "2020-04-06T19:24:29Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > In fact no other language I am at all familiar with (German, French, Spanish, Italian, not a very wide sample to be sure) has a separate word for ape and monkey. I once looked up ape in an English to French dictionary and it gave “grande singe sans queue” (literally big monkey without a tail). In Hebrew, the (informal) term for Ape translates as “Man(adj) Monkey(noun)” ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/25 "2020-04-06T19:35:24Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > In fact no other language I am at all familiar with (German, French, Spanish, Italian, not a very wide sample to be sure) has a separate word for ape and monkey. I once looked up ape in an English to French dictionary and it gave “grande singe sans queue” (literally big monkey without a tail). [In English, ape is the much older term, going back to Old English before 900 AD.](http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/taxonomy/apes-monkeys-etymology-2018.html)Originally it applied only to monkeys, since the Great Apes were unknown to Europeans until the 1600s. Monkey didn’t enter the language until about 1530, and [its etymology is obscure](https://blog.oup.com/2013/01/monkey-word-origin-etymology/). When a distinction began to be made, it was that apes were tailless, including monkeys like the Barbary Ape (know called the Barbary Macaque), the best known monkey to Europeans. The restriction of ape to the Great Apes apparently didn’t become formalized before the 20th Century. How that happened to the extent that pedants began chastising people for using it more broadly, in its original sense, would be an interesting story. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/26 "2020-04-06T19:36:58Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Much=thousands of times. Much[sup]Much[/sup] > [@Carryon](#): > > I just read that old world monkey are more closely related to apes, then they are to new world monkeys. > > Which brings all sorts of oddities, such as if this is indeed so then apes are a type of monkey and humans being apes would be included. Apes don’t have tails, though some monkeys like mandrills have very short ones. After the NWM lineage split, the OWM/ape ancestor developed trichromatic color vision. Interestingly, the New World howler monkeys may have developed this independently, and the populations of some NWM species like squirrel monkeys are on their way to developing more color vision. ---
**Author:** ![harmonicamoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@harmonicamoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmonicamoon)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2020, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/27 "2020-04-07T00:46:59Z")
Therefore we can deranged that NWM never went down that flat earth trail. Smart monkeys! ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/28 "2020-04-13T05:12:23Z")
Right on cue: > **[Crew of prehistoric monkeys rafted across the Atlantic to South America | CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/world/prehistoric-monkeys-crossed-atlantic-scn/index.html)** > > A crew of a now-extinct monkeys made a treacherous transatlantic journey on a natural raft from Africa to settle in South America around 35 million years ago, according to a study of fossilized teeth found in Peru. Complete with a floating raft video. A raft big enough to support trees! I’m a believer. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/29 "2020-04-13T05:46:04Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > Right on cue: > > [https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/09/world/prehistoric-monkeys-crossed-atlantic-scn/index.html](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/09/world/prehistoric-monkeys-crossed-atlantic-scn/index.html) > > Complete with a floating raft video. A raft big enough to support trees! > > I’m a believer. Incidentally, that video in Panama was known by kids of a family I know. The Chagres River, that produced those islands, while big enough is tiny compared to the Amazon or the Congo. Those rivers can produce floating islands that dwarf the ones in the video. Recent finds indicate that New World monkeys rafted from South America to Central America before the Panama land bridge was completed. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/30 "2020-04-13T06:57:34Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > [URL=“[How did English come to have different words for "ape" and "monkey"?](http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/taxonomy/apes-monkeys-etymology-2018.html)”] > > The restriction of ape to the Great Apes apparently didn’t become formalized before the 20th Century. How that happened to the extent that pedants began chastising people for using it more broadly, in its original sense, would be an interesting story. I wouldn’t be surprised if Edgar Rice Burroughs were involved somehow. Did the Tarzan novels make the distinction? ---
**Author:** ![GMANCANADA](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gmancanada/32/2837_2.png) [@GMANCANADA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GMANCANADA)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/31 "2020-04-13T07:23:48Z")
I just saw this last week (Apr. 8 2020) on [CNN.com](http://CNN.com): **“Crew of prehistoric monkeys rafted across the Atlantic to South America”** [https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/09/world/prehistoric-monkeys-crossed-atlantic-scn/index.html](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/09/world/prehistoric-monkeys-crossed-atlantic-scn/index.html) > [@](#): > > A crew of now-extinct monkeys made a treacherous transatlantic journey on a natural raft from Africa to settle in South America around 35 million years ago, according to a study of fossilized teeth found in Peru. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/32 "2020-04-13T07:23:57Z")
Burroughs created his own species of great ape, [the Mangani, and created his own view of the relationship between ape and human species.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangani) His fiction contributed to the confusion about the term ‘ape’, and ‘great ape’, not too mention tossing in quite a bit of racism. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/33 "2020-04-13T07:53:48Z")
What really gets me is how all of those camels manage to cling to driftwood. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/34 "2020-04-13T08:21:56Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > His fiction contributed to the confusion about the term ‘ape’, and ‘great ape’, not too mention tossing in quite a bit of racism. To be sure - there’s a reason why I haven’t let my kid read his books, even though I enjoyed them a lot at his age. But didn’t Burroughs also make a clear distinction between apes and monkeys? I wouldn’t be surprised if his works are the original reason why some English speakers care so much about the difference. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/35 "2020-04-13T19:17:13Z")
Tarzan’s companion Nikima was definitely a monkey. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/36 "2020-04-13T20:52:48Z")
> [@GMANCANADA](#): > > I just saw this last week (Apr. 8 2020) on [CNN.com](http://CNN.com): > > **“Crew of prehistoric monkeys rafted across the Atlantic to South America”** > > [https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/09/world/prehistoric-monkeys-crossed-atlantic-scn/index.html](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/09/world/prehistoric-monkeys-crossed-atlantic-scn/index.html) Yabbut wouldn’t that have to mean all New World monkeys are descended from a very small founder group? Something that would be obvious from any genetic studies? Or are they saying multiple such events occurred, in a time when the ocean span between Africa and South America was much closer than it is now… But somehow only monkeys and the ancestors of the “caviomorphs” of South America (who have no very close relatives in Africa?) made it across? ---
**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:** [April 13, 2020, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/37 "2020-04-13T23:36:20Z")
Presumably, the genetic studies are why they think it happened that way. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162/38 "2020-04-14T02:14:05Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > Yabbut wouldn’t that have to mean all New World monkeys are descended from a very small founder group? Something that would be obvious from any genetic studies? Or are they saying multiple such events occurred, in a time when the ocean span between Africa and South America was much closer than it is now… But somehow only monkeys and the ancestors of the “caviomorphs” of South America (who have no very close relatives in Africa?) made it across? There’s some confusion here, which is reasonable since the article is itself not very clear. -All present New World Monkeys belong to a single group, one that is related to one particular Old World group of primates. They probably descended from one founder group. At this distance in time, it is impossible to say how large the founder group was, but it was probably very small. This took place at least 36 million years ago. -The new find, Ucayalipithecus, is related to a different group in Africa, the parapithecids. This very primitive group probably split from the clade that later led to the ancestor of both the New World and Old World Monkeys. Both the parapithecids in the Old World, and the ones that colonized the New World, are now extinct, and havie left no living descendants. But this demonstrates that a second colonization event by primates occurred, also most likely by a very small group. This took place 32-35 million years ago. -Note that earliest finds of both groups are way inland in Peru. This was inland from the Atlantic coast then too. This means the actual colonization events must have taken place much earlier to allow both groups to spread so far inland. -The caviomorph rodents are in fact also of African origin, first appearing about 41 million years ago. So that’s a third apparent rafting event across the Atlantic. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-world-monkeys/851162.md?page=1)