Its an open question.
In archaic English "ape" meant any nonhuman primate without a tail.
The best known example was "the Barbary ape" of Gibralter and of "the Barbary coast" of North Africa- a tailless macaque that modern science classifies as a "monkey", and not as an "ape".
Other languages, like Italian, lack separate colloguial words for ape and monkey.
Early modern science divorced monkeys from apes, and kept apes seperate from humans.
Today science slices it up a little differently. Humans are recognized as being a type of "African Ape" (along with gorillas, chimps, and bonobos). Orangutans are considered "apes", but more distant in kinship to gorillas and chimps than the later two are to us. Also in Asia- the small gibbon and siamang are also classified as "apes" and not monkeys. But are not particularly close kin to either orangs or to us and our African cousins. Orangs and all of the African Apes are considered to be markedly more intelligent than old world monkeys. But the gibbon and the siamang are considered NO smarter than old world monkeys. And some say that the New World capuchin monkey is in the ape range of smarts.
Higher primates in the fossil record from the Oligocene (long before lucy) are often hard to classify as to which category they are: ape or old world monkey.
But one thing that all of the aforementioned living "apes" (from gibbons to us) have in common that other mammals dont have, and that even monkeys dont have...is a universal ball and socket joint in our shoulders. Birds can spread their wings. But dogs, cats, and horses, can only move their forelimbs front to back. Despite their humanlike arms and hands monkey forelimbs can only move in the same front to back plane of motion as those of horses and dogs. Capuchin monkeys and baboons cannot pose like Christ on the cross. But gibbons, orangs, chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and humans, can all spread their arms sideways to mimic birds and Christ.
03 Dec 2020, 12:19 pm
