Chapter One: Hey, Hey We're the Monkeys

The Family's Tree

Are gorillas a type of ape, or are apes gorillas? Are monkeys and apes the same thing? Are humans considered apes? Are simians different from primates? Help, Jeeves, I'm so confused! You're not alone, my anthropoid friend. Let's lay it out with a minimum of screeching, howling, and chest-beating:
Primates are human beings and all of the other animals that resemble us most closely. Primates have two main groups:
anthropoids and prosimians.
1. Anthropoids include:
Monkeys. New World monkeys live in South and Central America and include marmosets, tamarins, capuchins, howlers, spider monkeys, squirrel monkeys, woolly monkeys, and even woolly spider monkeys. Old World monkeys live in Asia and Africa and include baboons, colobus monkeys, guenons, langurs, and macaques.
Apes. There are four major ape groupings -- chimpanzees, gibbons, gorillas, and orangutans. Apes have no tails and are smarter than monkeys. Apes walk in an upright position instead of on four feet like monkeys. Apes actually climb trees; monkeys take a leap into them.
Humans. It's pretty much just custom, religious dogma, and species egotism that keep people from proudly classifying themselves as apes. Most scientists don't make that distinction.

By the way, if you exclude the humans from the above group, the apes and monkeys you have left are known as simians.

2. Prosimians include a number of lesser-known animals like aye-ayes, galagos, lemurs, lorises, pottos, and tarsiers. Prosimii means "premonkey" -- in other words, they closely resemble the primitive primates that lived tens of millions of years ago before monkeys, apes, and humans began to evol