50 Fun Facts About Primates

Lemurs are native only to which island, where they evolved in isolation for millions of years?

Madagascar's lemurs descend from a few animals that drifted over from Africa on tangled mats of vegetation. Most kinds are now threatened or endangered.

Which great ape, the slowest breeder of all, is named from Malay words for 'person of the forest'?

Orangutan mothers raise a single infant for six to nine years before giving birth again, the longest gap of any great ape. They also spend more of their lives in the trees than the others.

Which small primate of South and Southeast Asian forests is the only one with a toxic bite?

Slow loris venom starts as a secretion from a gland on the upper arm, which the animal licks so that it mixes with saliva. Mothers even groom it onto their young as protection.

Europe's only wild monkeys live in which territory, where Churchill once had their numbers topped up?

Gibraltar tradition holds that British rule will last only as long as its Barbary macaques do, so in 1942 Churchill had fresh animals brought over from North Africa when just seven remained.

Jack, a baboon in 1880s South Africa, earned a wage and a weekly beer ration for operating which equipment?

Railway signals at Uitenhage were worked by Jack for James Wide, a signalman who had lost both legs. In nine years on the job the baboon is said never to have made a mistake.

Which colorful-faced African primate, the largest monkey, is the species of Rafiki in The Lion King?

Mandrill hordes in Gabon have averaged more than 600 animals, possibly the largest stable groups of any wild primate. No other primate differs more between males and females.

Snow monkeys, the most northerly of all non-human primates, bathe in hot springs in which country?

Japan's snow monkeys are macaques that cope with months of snow cover and even roll snowballs for fun. Those at Jigokudani began soaking in the steaming pools in the 1960s.

Which gorilla, born at San Francisco Zoo, used sign language and kept a pet kitten named All Ball?

Koko was taught by the psychologist Francine Patterson, and her bond with the kitten became a best-selling children's picture book in 1985. Critics still argue over how much she understood.

Which tiny Southeast Asian primates eat only animal prey and have eyeballs as big as their brains?

Tarsiers leap onto insects, lizards and now and then baby birds in the dark. They can turn their heads 180 degrees in either direction to see what is behind them.

Which nocturnal lemur taps on trees to find grubs, then hooks them out with a thin middle finger?

Aye-aye front teeth never stop growing, like a rodent's, which led early naturalists to class the animal as a squirrel. It gnaws a hole in the wood before reaching in for its meal.

Which body part, found on nearly every monkey, do all apes lack because of a gene mutation?

A tail is missing in gorillas, chimpanzees and humans alike because of a change in a gene called TBXT. The nearly tailless Barbary macaque, a monkey, was long miscalled the Barbary ape.

Which naturalist created the order Primates, grouping humans with monkeys a century before Darwin?

Carl Linnaeus placed humans, monkeys and lemurs in the group in 1758, and at first counted bats as primates too.

Which traditional name groups lemurs, pottos and other primates that are neither monkeys nor apes?

Prosimians means 'before apes', a label coined in 1811. Biologists now treat it as an informal grouping, since some of its members are closer kin to monkeys than to lemurs.

Which scientific name, from Greek for 'broad-nosed', covers all the monkeys native to the Americas?

Platyrrhines have flatter noses than other monkeys, with nostrils that open out to the sides. Their line split from the monkeys and apes of Africa and Asia about 40 million years ago.

Humans share which taxonomic family, known as the great apes, with gorillas and chimpanzees?

Hominidae originally covered only humans and their closest extinct relatives. It was later widened, and now holds eight living species in four genera.

Chimpanzees and bonobos, the closest living relatives of humans, together make up which genus?

Pan is generally thought to be named after the goat-legged Greek god of the wild, though the naturalist who coined it in 1816 never explained his choice.

Where most mammals have claws, the fingers and toes of primates usually end in what instead?

Nails, opposable thumbs and long curling fingers are all legacies of an ancestry spent gripping branches. Lemurs keep one claw-like nail on each foot just for grooming.

Which long-armed Asian primates swing through trees at up to 34 mph and sing duets with their mates?

Gibbons are known as the lesser apes, and a mated pair's duet can carry for about a kilometer. A single swing can cover 15 meters.

The word 'primate', also a title for senior bishops, comes from a Latin word with which meaning?

Of the first rank is what Latin 'primas' meant, and the Church used it for its chief bishops centuries before biology borrowed it for the order of mammals that includes humans.

Monkeys, apes and humans all lost a working gene for making which nutrient, so must get it from food?

Vitamin C is made in the body by most animals, but the gene for one step broke in an ancestor of monkeys and apes. Guinea pigs and most bats cannot make it either.

The world's smallest primate, a 30-gram animal named after Madame Berthe, belongs to which group?

Mouse lemurs include Madame Berthe's, whose body is only about nine centimeters long. It honors Berthe Rakotosamimanana, a primatologist and conservationist who died in 2005.

Males of which primate confront rivals in 'stink fights', wafting scent smeared from glands on their arms?

Ring-tailed lemur troops are female-dominant, and it falls to the top female to defend the home range. On cold mornings the animals sit upright facing the sun in a pose likened to the lotus position.

Bushbabies, the leaping nocturnal primates of African forests, are known to scientists by which other name?

Galagos are champion jumpers: the highest reliably recorded leap is 2.25 meters. The nickname is said to come from either their cries or their looks.

Which long-limbed primate of Central and South American treetops has hook-like hands with no thumbs?

Spider monkey hands are long, narrow hooks for swinging beneath branches. The genus name Ateles comes from a Greek word for 'incomplete', a nod to the missing digit.

Which New World monkeys, named after an order of hooded friars, include Marcel in the sitcom Friends?

Capuchins got the name because the hair on their heads was thought to resemble a friar's cowl. In the wild they are known for using tools to crack open nuts.

Which monkey of flooded Amazon forests has a hairless head and a bright crimson face?

Uakari faces are scarlet because the skin lacks pigment and is rich in tiny blood vessels. Their powerful jaws open unripe fruit that most other primates cannot crack.

Which endangered monkey of Brazil's coastal rainforest is pictured on the Brazilian 20-real banknote?

Golden lion tamarin numbers recovered partly through the release of zoo-born animals into the wild. The name comes from the mane of long reddish-orange hair around the face.

Which much-studied African primates give a distinct alarm call for leopards, eagles and pythons?

Vervet monkeys also pick out family by voice: a mother can recognize her own offspring from a scream alone, and looks toward it faster than the other mothers do.

Proboscis monkeys, strong swimmers with partly webbed toes, live wild only on which island?

Borneo's mangroves and coasts suit what may be the most aquatic of all primates, which can swim 20 meters underwater. The species is shared by Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Geladas, the grass-eating 'bleeding-heart monkeys', live only in the highlands of which African country?

Ethiopia's geladas get up to 90 percent of their diet from grass, plucked with small, sturdy fingers. The nickname comes from an hourglass-shaped patch of bare red skin on the chest.

Which primatologist watched wild chimpanzees at Gombe strip twigs into tools for fishing out termites?

Jane Goodall's finding overturned the belief that only humans make tools. She also showed that the apes, long assumed to be vegetarians, hunt and eat colobus monkeys.

Dian Fossey spent two decades studying mountain gorillas, and was murdered, in which African country?

Rwanda's Karisoke Research Center was her base, where she told individual gorillas apart by sketching their 'noseprints'. Her book Gorillas in the Mist appeared two years before her death.

Which fossil hunter of Olduvai Gorge fame sent three women, his 'Trimates', to study wild great apes?

Louis Leakey saw field studies of living primates as a key to understanding human evolution. Each of the three researchers he backed became a leading scholar in her own right.

Which psychologist showed that infant monkeys preferred a cloth 'mother' to a wire one that gave milk?

Harry Harlow found that the infants visited the wire figure only to feed, then went straight back to the cloth one. His experiments are now seen as ethically controversial.

Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee taught sign language in the 1970s, was named as a pun on which linguist?

Noam Chomsky had argued that humans are 'wired' to develop language. The study's leader, Herbert Terrace, concluded that Nim was mimicking his teachers' signs to earn rewards.

Which Gordon Gallup experiment do chimpanzees pass by touching dye marks secretly painted on their heads?

Mirror test subjects in Gallup's first study were four young chimpanzees, marked with red dye on a brow and an ear while anesthetized. Touching the marks showed they knew the reflection was their own.

Albert II, the first primate and first mammal in space, rode a V-2 rocket and was which kind of animal?

Rhesus monkey Albert II reached space in June 1949 but died on impact when his parachute failed. His species also gave its name to the Rh factor in human blood groups.

Which chimpanzee, named after a New Mexico aerospace lab, became the first great ape in space?

Ham was officially just No. 65 until he returned safely from his suborbital flight in 1961. The name is an acronym of the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center.

Bonobos live only south of which African river, a barrier that keeps them apart from chimpanzees?

Congo waters separate the two apes because neither is a good swimmer. The word bonobo is thought to come from a misspelling of Bolobo, a river town, on a shipping crate.

Which term, from the Latin for 'arm', names the hand-over-hand swinging that siamangs use in the canopy?

Brachiation relies on long forelimbs, curved fingers and freely rotating wrists. Humans still carry signs of a swinging ancestor, including unusually flexible shoulder joints.

Which Hindu deity, a monkey hero of the Ramayana, gives India's sacred gray langurs their other name?

Hanuman langurs are held sacred by Hindus, which helps explain why they thrive inside Indian towns and cities. Some troops get much of their food from temples.

Which ancient Egyptian god of writing and wisdom was often shown with the head of an ibis or a baboon?

Thoth was the scribe of the gods, and the hamadryas baboons sacred to him appear all over Egyptian art. The species itself has since died out in Egypt.

Howler monkeys owe a roar that carries about three miles to an enlarged, hollow version of which bone?

Hyoid bones in male howlers form a hollow chamber that air is drawn through to make one of the loudest calls of any land animal. In humans the same small neck bone helps move the tongue.

What do gorillas and chimpanzees build afresh from branches and leaves almost every evening?

A sleeping nest is usually used for one night only. One study found that chimpanzee nests carry fewer skin bacteria and parasites than human beds do.

The ancestors of South America's monkeys probably arrived on rafts of vegetation across which ocean?

Atlantic crossings were less daunting then, because the ocean was about a third narrower and its currents favored a westward drift. The ancestors of guinea pigs and capybaras made the same trip.

Lemurs were named after the lemures of ancient Roman belief, which were what kind of beings?

Spirits of the dead were driven out of Roman homes at a festival called the Lemuria. The naturalist who borrowed the word had in mind animals that roam slowly by night, not eerie eyes or cries.

Baboons, macaques and their close relatives stash food to eat later in which built-in feature?

Cheek pouches are found in every member of the baboon and macaque subfamily. Their leaf-eating cousins, the colobus monkeys and langurs, lack them and digest with complex stomachs instead.

Which bony ridge along the top of the skull anchors the huge chewing muscles of a male gorilla?

Sagittal crest growth follows the temporalis, one of the main chewing muscles, as a young male matures. Chimpanzees only rarely develop one.

Marmosets and their close relatives are the only monkeys that regularly give birth to which kind of litter?

Twins make up more than 80 percent of births in the species studied. The work is shared out, with the group's males taking turns to carry the infants.

Old World monkeys can sleep sitting upright on thin branches thanks to which feature of their rear ends?

Ischial callosities are pads of thickened skin on the rump. Perched on them, a monkey can doze on a thin branch out of reach of predators without falling.