94 Fun Facts About Monkey

What do most monkeys have that apes lack?

Presence of a tail, even a tiny nub, is the usual tell; the few nearly tailless monkeys were long miscalled apes for exactly that reason.

A 2017 review found about 60% of primate species to be what?

Threatened with extinction, that is: the review also found three in four primate species in decline, mostly because farming, logging and hunting are eating into their forests.

Which of these primate groups is classified as an Old World monkey?

Langurs are Old World monkeys; India's grey langurs are held sacred by Hindus, so they wander temples and villages freely, even raiding crops and shops.

Which of these is a New World monkey?

Titis are New World monkeys that pair for life, and a bonded couple often sits side by side with tails twined together.

The ancestors of New World monkeys are thought to have reached South America by rafting across which ocean?

The Atlantic was much narrower then, and the monkeys' ancestors are thought to have drifted over from Africa on mats of vegetation, perhaps hopping between islands that have since sunk.

What is the primary function of a prehensile tail for many monkey species?

Grasping branches is the job: such a tail works as a fifth limb that can hold the monkey's whole weight, leaving both hands free to pick food.

The pygmy marmoset, the world's smallest monkey, gnaws holes in bark to feed on what?

Tree gum is the staple: a pygmy marmoset gouges holes in bark with its sharp lower teeth, then comes back again and again to lap up what oozes out.

In Harry Harlow's 1950s experiments, baby monkeys clung to a surrogate 'mother' made of what rather than a wire one with milk?

Soft cloth won: the infants cuddled the padded dummy for most of the day and visited the wire one only to feed, showing that comfort, not just food, ties a baby to its mother.

Which country successfully sent the first primate into space in 1949?

The United States launched Albert II on a V-2 rocket in June 1949; he climbed 83 miles, becoming the first primate in space, but died on impact when his parachute failed.

What does a male baboon's wide 'yawn' at a rival show off?

His long canine teeth are the message: a male baboon's yawn is a threat, and paired with raised eyebrows it warns a rival to back down.

Howler monkeys owe their far-carrying roar to an enlarged bone in which part of the body?

The throat holds an oversized hyoid bone that deepens and amplifies the call, so a howler chorus at dawn can be heard up to three miles away.

Old World monkeys are native to which continents?

Africa and Asia are their home today, but fossils show Old World monkeys once lived across much of Europe as well.

A monkey named Imo on Japan's Koshima Island became famous for doing what with sweet potatoes?

Washing them in water began with Imo, who rinsed the sand off in a stream; her companions copied her, and she later took to dipping her potatoes in the sea.

Which long-limbed New World monkey's genus name, Ateles, means 'incomplete' because its thumb is missing or tiny?

Spider monkeys (genus Ateles) have at most a stub of a thumb, hence the Greek for 'incomplete'; their long limbs dangling from the tail like spider legs earned the common name.

The infinite monkey theorem pictures a monkey at a typewriter eventually producing the works of which writer?

William Shakespeare is the usual target; when six macaques at an English zoo were given a keyboard in 2003, they typed five pages, mostly the letter S, and used it as a toilet.

About 300 Barbary macaques, Europe's only wild monkeys, live where?

Gibraltar's macaques are not native Europeans: the colony was brought over from North Africa, where the species lives wild in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and Algeria.

Which New World monkeys have claws instead of flat nails on every digit except the big toe?

Marmosets and their tamarin cousins have claw-like nails on all but the big toe, which let them cling to upright trunks and scamper like squirrels.

Which big-eyed New World monkeys make up the genus Aotus, a name meaning 'earless'?

Night monkeys, or owl monkeys, are the only truly nocturnal monkeys, and Aotus means 'earless' because their small ears are almost hidden in their fur.

The gelada, or bleeding-heart monkey, lives only in the highlands of which country?

Ethiopia's highlands are the gelada's only home; a bright red, hourglass-shaped patch of bare skin on its chest earns it the 'bleeding-heart' name.

The 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' monkeys were made famous by a 17th-century shrine carving in which country?

Japan's Tōshō-gū shrine at Nikkō carries the three wise monkeys, close to carved elephants made by an artist who had never seen one.

Which of these animals is classified as an ape, not a monkey?

Gibbons are the 'lesser apes': long-armed specialists that swing hand over hand beneath the branches, crossing gaps of up to 15 metres at a time.

Which behaviour between group-mates does most to reinforce monkey social bonds and rank?

Grooming mostly flows up the hierarchy: low-ranking monkeys groom their superiors, and partners who groom each other back one another up in fights.

Capuchin monkeys were once the famous sidekicks of which street musicians, collecting coins from the crowd?

Organ grinders cranked the tune while the monkey did tricks and held out a tin cup; New York's mayor banned the instruments from the city's streets in 1935.

In the original Oz novel, who sends the Winged Monkeys after Dorothy and her friends?

The Wicked Witch of the West commands them through a magic Golden Cap, whose owner may call on the Winged Monkeys only three times; Dorothy later takes the cap and they serve her.

The endangered golden lion tamarin's entire wild range lies within which Brazilian state?

Rio de Janeiro state holds every wild golden lion tamarin; only a few hundred were left by the early 1970s, before zoo-bred animals were released there to help rebuild the population.

The name 'colobus' comes from a Greek word meaning 'docked' or 'maimed', referring to what feature?

A stump-like thumb, or none at all, is the 'docked' part behind the Greek-derived name; the tail is anything but docked, being long and tipped with a showy white tuft.

In Kipling's The Jungle Book, which animal frees Mowgli from his monkey kidnappers by hypnotising them?

Kaa the python is a hero in the book, not the villain of the Disney film: Baloo and Bagheera recruit him because the monkeys fear him alone, and his swaying 'hunger dance' holds them spellbound.

In the 1902 horror story The Monkey's Paw, what does the cursed paw grant its owner?

Three wishes come with the paw, each at a terrible price: the family's first, for 200 pounds, is paid out as compensation for their son's death at the factory.

What is the primary food of most spider monkeys?

Fruits are the staple and are swallowed whole, so spider monkeys scatter the seeds in their droppings and rank among the rainforest's key tree planters.

Which monkey of mangrove swamps is a strong swimmer with partially webbed toes?

The proboscis monkey has partially webbed toes and often belly-flops from branches into the water, swimming hard to outpace the crocodiles that hunt it.

Which food makes up most of a colobus monkey's diet?

Leaves are the staple: a colobus ferments them in a large, multi-chambered stomach full of bacteria, much as a cow does, which lets it thrive on tough foliage.

Vervet monkeys have three famous alarm calls: for leopards, for snakes and for which other predator?

Eagles get their own alarm call, which sends vervets looking skyward and diving into thick bushes, while the leopard and snake calls each prompt a different escape.

What is the main food of China's golden snub-nosed monkey, which lives in snowy mountain forests?

Lichens stay on the trees all year, so they carry the golden snub-nosed monkey through snowy winters when buds, fruit and seeds are out of season.

Before a 1976 trade ban, tens of thousands of cotton-top tamarins were exported for what?

Medical research: captive cotton-tops are prone to colitis and a colon cancer linked to it, so labs studying those diseases in people imported them from Colombia until the ban.

Miss Baker, who came back alive from a 1959 rocket flight with a fellow monkey named Able, was which species?

Miss Baker was a squirrel monkey who rode a Jupiter missile in May 1959 and came back safe with Able; she lived another 25 years, dying in 1984 at the age of 27.

How do some of Japan's snow monkeys beat the winter cold?

Bathing in hot springs keeps them warm, and winter soaks go with lower stress levels; high-ranking females tend to hog the limited pool space.

Curious George's creators, H.A. and Margret Rey, fled which city by bicycle in 1940?

Paris was about to fall when Hans and Margret Rey pedalled out in June 1940 on bicycles they had built themselves, carrying the manuscript that became Curious George.

The bald uakari of the western Amazon is instantly recognizable by a bald head and a face of what colour?

Crimson and hairless, the bald uakari's face is unmistakable; its powerful jaws crack hard, unripe fruits that other monkeys cannot open.

Which Amazonian tamarin sports a long, drooping white moustache?

The emperor tamarin is believed to have been named for the likeness of its sweeping white moustache to that of Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Ischial callosities, the hardened pads on the rumps of Old World monkeys, let them do what?

Sleep upright on branches is the point: the tough, nerveless pads let a monkey doze sitting on a thin limb, out of reach of predators, without falling.

Which baboon, revered by the ancient Egyptians, is also known as the sacred baboon?

The hamadryas baboon appears all through ancient Egyptian art as a sacred animal, yet the species has since died out in Egypt itself.

What food makes up the bulk of the gelada's diet, setting it apart from its baboon relatives?

Grasses are plucked blade by blade as the gelada shuffles along on its rump, which makes it the only primate that lives mainly by grazing.

Which long-legged savanna monkey is the fastest-running primate, reaching 55 km/h?

The patas, also called the hussar or military monkey, is built for ground speed rather than climbing: its long limbs let it outrun predators across open country.

Which of these traits marks New World monkeys rather than Old World monkeys?

Sideways-facing nostrils on a broad, flat nose mark the New World monkeys, which is why scientists call them platyrrhines, from the Greek for 'broad-nosed'.

Squirrel monkeys cool off and mark their trails by rubbing what over their hands and feet?

Their own urine does the job: in 'urine washing' a squirrel monkey wets its hands and feet and wipes them over its body, which may cool it, mark its trail and even improve its grip.

Which of these primates is a prosimian rather than a monkey?

Lemurs are prosimians from Madagascar; Linnaeus took their name from the lemures, the restless spirits of the dead in Roman belief.

Young macaques in the mountains of Honshu have been seen rolling what, apparently just for fun?

Snowballs it is: youngsters pack and roll them purely in play, with no survival purpose, and the habit spreads from one monkey to another.

The red-shanked douc, a strikingly colourful monkey, is native to which region?

Vietnam and Laos share the red-shanked douc, with a few perhaps over the border in Cambodia; hunting, forest loss and the pet trade have left it critically endangered.

The drill, the mandrill's closest relative, is native to which region?

Cameroon and Nigeria, plus the island of Bioko, are the drill's only home, and heavy hunting there has made it one of the continent's most endangered primates.

Which of these continents has never had native monkeys?

Australia has no native monkeys: its marsupials, possums among them, evolved to fill the roles that placental mammals such as monkeys play elsewhere.

Which baboon has the widest range, across some 25 countries from Mali to Ethiopia and Tanzania?

The olive baboon is also known for its 'friendships': a female may form a lasting bond with one or two males, foraging, travelling and sleeping near them.

Most monkey species fall into which dietary group?

Omnivores is the fit: alongside plants, most monkeys eat insects, eggs and small animals, and baboons will catch prey as large as a small antelope.

Which monkey has the widest geographic range of any primate other than humans?

Rhesus macaque: only humans are more widespread among primates, because this monkey copes with almost any habitat from Afghanistan to southern China.

De Brazza's monkey is named after a 19th-century explorer of which river basin?

The Congo basin was explored for France by Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, who gave his name to Brazzaville, and by his naturalist brother Jacques; the monkey carries the family name.

Which Caribbean island's wild green monkeys descend from animals shipped from West Africa?

Barbados got its green monkeys in the 17th century, when slave ships brought the animals to the island, and their descendants still roam it wild today.

What are the internal cheek pouches of Old World monkeys such as macaques, baboons and mandrills used for?

Storing food temporarily is the job: the pouches let a foraging monkey gather food fast and carry it off to eat later in a safer spot.

Capuchin monkeys take their name from what?

An order of friars, the Capuchins, gave the monkeys their name: the animals' brown colouring and cowl-like cap of hair recalled the friars' hooded brown habits.

The gelada is the last of a once-widespread line of monkeys whose fossils reach from Africa as far east as which country?

India is the eastern limit of the fossils: the gelada is the sole survivor of a once-widespread group whose extinct members included monkeys far bigger than any alive today.

Digs in Brazil show wild monkeys have cracked nuts with stone tools for roughly how long?

About 3,000 years: a 2019 dig at Serra da Capivara dated the oldest stone hammers to around then, and their changing wear showed the monkeys switched foods over the centuries.

The Monkey King Sun Wukong is the protagonist of which classic Chinese novel?

Journey to the West opens with the Monkey King storming heaven, for which the Buddha pins him under a mountain for 500 years before he is freed to guard a monk on the road west.

In the Chinese zodiac, which bird's year follows the Year of the Monkey?

The Rooster follows the Monkey, the ninth of the twelve animals; in one telling of the Great Race folk tale the two crossed the river on a raft with the Goat, so the three finished in a row.

Which Hindu monkey god is the devoted ally of Prince Rama in the Ramayana?

Hanuman, sent to fetch a healing herb for Rama's wounded brother, did not know which plant it was, so in the best-known telling he carried the whole mountain back.

The proboscis monkey is endemic to which Southeast Asian island?

Borneo is its only home; there the male's huge, drooping nose is thought to work as an echo chamber, amplifying the honks that impress females and warn off rivals.

What colour is a proboscis monkey's face at birth, before it darkens to grey?

Blue it is. Mothers of this species usually give birth at night and eat the placenta straight afterwards.

Mandrills live wild in the rainforests of which of these countries?

Gabon is home to mandrill groups that can number 200 or more; they spend their days foraging on the forest floor, and hunting for bushmeat is one of the main threats to them.

Which naturalist wrote that no other mammal is 'coloured in so extraordinary a manner' as the adult male mandrill?

Charles Darwin wrote that in The Descent of Man (1871); the male's colours grow brighter when he is excited, and the most vivid males father the most young.

Landsteiner and Wiener's experiments with monkey red cells gave which blood-group system its name?

Rh is short for rhesus: rabbits injected with rhesus monkey red cells made the serum that revealed the factor, though its importance was grasped only in 1940.

Which virus is named after the Ugandan forest where it was first isolated from a caged monkey in 1947?

Zika takes its name from Uganda's Zika Forest near Lake Victoria, where yellow fever researchers had placed a caged monkey that turned out to carry a virus new to science.

Who ordered a dwindling colony of Barbary macaques restocked during the Second World War?

Winston Churchill had fresh monkeys shipped in from North Africa when only a handful were left, because of an old belief that Britain would lose the territory if they ever died out.

Folklore says which English town hanged a shipwrecked monkey as a French spy?

Hartlepool's legend has townsfolk hanging a shipwrecked monkey as a French spy during the Napoleonic Wars; the football club's mascot H'Angus embraced the tale, and the man in the suit was elected mayor in 2002.

The 1925 'Monkey Trial' over teaching evolution in schools took place in which US state?

The Scopes trial was held in Dayton, Tennessee, in July 1925: teacher John Scopes was charged under the state's Butler Act, and the case was deliberately staged to bring publicity to the small town.

Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, macaques born in Shanghai in 2017, were the first primates to be what?

Cloned like Dolly the sheep, by moving a body cell's nucleus into an emptied egg; an earlier cloned monkey, Tetra, had been made in 1999 by the simpler trick of splitting an embryo.

Which Brazilian primates are the largest of all the New World monkeys?

Muriquis are also among the gentlest of primates: aggression is exceptionally rare among them, and males cement their bonds with hugs.

Night monkeys have been used since the 1960s in laboratory research on which mosquito-borne disease?

Malaria research has relied on night monkeys since the 1960s, because the parasites that sicken people can be studied in them, which is true of very few animals.

Most marmoset fraternal twins swap blood cells in the womb, making them what?

Chimeras carry cells from two individuals: marmoset twins share a blood supply through fused placentas, so each is born with its sibling's blood cells mixed in with its own.

From 1979, the Boston charity Helping Hands trained capuchin monkeys, much like assistance dogs, to help people living with what?

Quadriplegia was the focus, with the monkeys fetching and handling things much as assistance dogs do; under later US disability rules, though, only dogs count as service animals.

The lion-tailed macaque, or wanderoo, a black monkey with a silver mane, is endemic to which Indian mountain range?

The Western Ghats' rainforests are its only home; this shy macaque keeps to the upper canopy and avoids people more than its relatives do, so forest clearance hits it hard.

Which country launched Juan, a tufted capuchin, on a Rigel 04 rocket in 1969?

Argentina launched Juan from Chamical in La Rioja Province on 23 December 1969 as part of 'Operación Navidad'; the capuchin came from the country's own Misiones Province and was recovered alive.

Which country launched two macaques on Vesta rockets in March 1967?

France flew Martine and Pierrette six days apart, four years after launching a cat named Félicette; Martine survived her trip above the edge of space.

Swayambhunath, a hilltop stupa nicknamed the 'Monkey Temple', overlooks which capital?

Kathmandu's Swayambhunath is nicknamed for the monkey families that wander its shrines; legend says the valley below was once a deep lake, drained by the bodhisattva Manjushri.

Farmers in Thailand and Malaysia train macaques to climb trees and harvest which crop?

Coconuts are twisted off tall palms by trained pig-tailed macaques, a job that is dangerous for a person but comes naturally to a monkey.

Who voiced Rafiki, the mandrill shaman, in Disney's original 1994 The Lion King?

Robert Guillaume, the Emmy-winning star of the sitcom Benson, voiced Rafiki in 1994; in the Broadway musical the mandrill became a female character.

At Bali's Uluwatu Temple, macaques snatch visitors' phones and glasses in order to do what?

Trade them back for food: the habit is learned and handed down the generations, and seasoned thieves hold out for a better snack when they have grabbed something valuable.

Old World monkeys share what kind of colour vision with humans?

Old World monkeys, like humans and apes, are routinely trichromatic; New World monkeys are a mixed bag — many females see three colours while males see two — and owl monkeys see in monochrome.

The kipunji, a monkey unknown to science until 2003, lives in the highland forests of which country?

Tanzania's Mount Rungwe gives the kipunji's genus, Rungwecebus, its name; the monkey announces itself with a low-pitched call described as a 'honk-bark'.

The lesula, a blue-bottomed guenon confirmed as a new species in 2012, is native to where?

DR Congo's Lomami basin is its only home; local hunters knew the lesula well, but scientists first came across it only in 2007 and named it in 2012.

Myanmar's snub-nosed monkey earned a nickname for doing what whenever it rains?

Sneezing is said to start when rain runs into its upturned nostrils, so locals report that it sits out showers with its face tucked between its knees.

Which country's King Alexander died in 1920 after a pet monkey bit him in the royal gardens?

Greece lost its 27-year-old king to blood poisoning after he tried to separate a pet monkey from his dog; his death brought his exiled father, Constantine, back to the throne.

A virus carried harmlessly by West Africa's sooty mangabeys jumped to people and became which human virus?

HIV-2 descends from the mangabeys' own immunodeficiency virus, which does the monkeys no harm; the commoner HIV-1 came from the chimpanzee version instead.

Disneynature's Monkey Kingdom (2015) follows toque macaques living among ancient ruins in which country?

Sri Lanka is the toque macaque's only home; the film follows Maya, born at the bottom of the pecking order in the ruined city of Polonnaruwa, as she raises her son.

ANDi, the first genetically modified rhesus monkey, carried a gene taken from which animal?

A jellyfish supplied the gene, which makes a green fluorescent protein used as a glowing marker; it was slipped into the egg that grew into ANDi at an Oregon research centre.

Which ancient Egyptian god was often depicted as a baboon, sometimes holding up a crescent moon?

Thoth, moon god and scribe of the gods, was shown as an ibis or a baboon, and Egyptians mummified ibises by the million and buried them in his honour.

Monkey Day, 14 December, began in 2000 as a joke when an art student did what?

Marked a calendar: Michigan State art student Casey Sorrow scribbled 'Monkey Day' on a friend's calendar, and when the date came round the friends dressed up and celebrated, so a tradition was born.

A 1930s tour-boat operator released rhesus macaques that went feral in which US state?

Florida's Silver Springs got its monkeys in 1938 from a boat operator known as Colonel Tooey, who wanted to liven up his Jungle Cruise; the tale that they escaped from a Tarzan film shoot is a myth.