Latest news with #monkeys
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
What's the difference between apes and monkeys?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. On its face, a comparison of monkeys and apes seems straightforward: Modern primates have defining physical features and behaviors that clearly sort them in different categories. Beginning with living animals, those differences are easy to pick out. Most monkeys have tails; some have prehensile tails, which means they can grasp and hold things. They're quadrupeds, meaning they use all four limbs to get around. They have four limbs that are about the same length, as well as a flexible spine. Monkeys can be subdivided into Old World and New World classifications based on where they live. Old World monkeys live in Africa and Asia, while New World monkeys live in Central and South America, according to the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance. Old World monkeys are also known as African-Eurasian and New World monkeys as Neotropical. Apes, on the other hand, don't have tails. Their "orthograde" body plan makes them capable of standing upright and gives them disproportionate limbs, with long arms and shorter legs. Inversely, humans — which are also apes — have long legs and shorter arms. Apes also have a larger brain relative to their body size than monkeys do, which has critical implications for intelligence. "There is a significant difference in intelligence between monkeys and apes," Becky Malinsky, curator of primates at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, told Live Science in an email. "While monkeys are capable of complex thinking, they generally have a lower cognitive capacity than apes." Related: What did the last common ancestor between humans and apes look like? Apes can be subdivided into the great and lesser apes based on their size. Great apes include chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), eastern gorillas (Gorilla beringei), western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) — all of which live in Africa — and orangutans (Pongo), which live in Southeast Asia. Lesser apes comprise gibbons and siamangs, which live in Southeast Asia. Although humans are also great apes, this article focuses on non-human primates. But when you consider their evolutionary history, the difference between apes and monkeys is murkier. "From the surface, it seems like a very easy thing to discuss," Sergio Almécija, a senior research scientist of biological anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, told Live Science. "But that superficial impression, I think, [is] based on living animals only." According to a review published in the journal Science in 2021, of which Almécija is the lead author, humans diverged from apes — specifically chimpanzees — between 9.3 million and 6.5 million years ago. RELATED MYSTERIES —Why do chimpanzees throw poop? —Could monkeys really type the complete works of Shakespeare? —Why haven't all primates evolved into humans? But apes and monkeys diverged from their last common ancestor even longer ago: between 23 million and 34 million years ago, according to a 2013 paper published in the journal Nature. The authors analyzed the oldest known fossils from Old World (African-Eurasian) monkeys and apes, found in the Rukwa Rift Basin in southwestern Tanzania: a partial jawbone with three teeth from an ape, and a single molar from a monkey. The team classified these novel fossil primates, calling the ape Rukwapithecus fleaglei and the monkey Nsungwepithecus gunnelli. Geological dating of the rock layer in which these fossils were found indicate they're about 25.2 million years old. Still, there's much more to learn about how primates evolved over millions of years. "The fossil record can lead to varying interpretations and debate," Malinsky wrote. "It's really much more complex than we think," Almécija said. "We don't have as much information as we think we do to answer some of these questions."
Daily Mail
06-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Two passengers arrested at Colombia airport after trying to smuggle six alive and dead monkeys in their PANTS and bags
Two passengers have been arrested after they were caught trying to smuggle baby monkeys out of Colombia in their underwear. The unnamed couple were intercepted by police while passing through security at Jose Maria Cordova Airport in Rionegro on Saturday. Officers were shocked to discover six sedated monkeys - two white-faced apes and four cotton-top tamarins - hidden in cloth bags that were concealed between the pair's legs. Two of the tiny animals were found dead, while the rest were discovered in critical condition, having suffered from severe dehydration, malnutrition and abuse. Video footage shared by Colombian police shows four baby apes lying helplessly in a cardboard box after they were rescued from the couple's possession. The duo were planning to smuggle the primates - who are believed to be no older than two months old - out of the country, Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reported. The animals are critically endangered species. According to a report issued by local environmental agency Cornare, the monkeys 'showed lesions and a marked level of stress'. Cornare director, Javier Valencia Gonzalez, said: 'We emphatically reject this type of wildlife trafficking. Wildlife must remain free. We cannot continue to allow this illegal activity to continue to grow in our country and around the world.' It is understood that the couple are not from Colombia, although their nationality has not been disclosed. They have been charged with animal abuse and exploiting natural resources. This is not the first instance in which police have caught smugglers trying to sneak apes through airports. Last year, a baby gorilla was rescued after it was discovered inside a small wooden crate at Istanbul Airport in Turkey. The animal was part of a cargo shipment that was being transported from Nigeria to Bangkok in Thailand. Customs enforcement teams from the Ministry of Trade inspected the cargo and identified the baby Western lowland gorilla - an endangered species which should be protected. They had flagged the cargo as part of their efforts to protect wildlife and natural habitat. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) identifies the species as facing the highest risk of extinction, making its international trade illegal except in rare cases. After the rescue, officials transferred the baby gorilla to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's care units. A Ministry spokesperson said: 'The little one is doing well. It was confiscated during customs checks while being illegally transported without proper documentation. The General Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks personnel are providing rehabilitation and necessary care.' 'The gorilla remains under close observation to ensure its recovery,' they added. 'Rehabilitation experts are working diligently to help the gorilla regain strength and health. Their care aims to provide a safe environment for the animal's well-being.'
New York Times
29-04-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Humans' Wounds Heal Much More Slowly Than Other Mammals'
Watching wild baboons in Kenya, Akiko Matsumoto-Oda, an evolutionary biologist and primatologist at the University of the Ryukyus in Japan, had a front-row seat to the violence between these monkeys, especially the males. 'I was struck by how frequently they sustained injuries,' she said, 'and, even more, by how rapidly they recovered — even from seemingly severe wounds.' Compared with her own experiences with nicks and cuts, the baboons' ability to heal seemed like a superpower. In a study published on Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Dr. Matsumoto-Oda and her colleagues compared the healing rates of humans, chimpanzees, monkeys and mice. They found that human wounds took more than twice as long to heal as wounds of any of the other mammals. Our slow healing may be a result of an evolutionary trade-off we made long ago, when we shed fur in favor of naked, sweaty skin that keeps us cool. When possible, the researchers wanted to study healing in a way that was less violent and more controlled than watching wild baboons. To measure human healing, they recruited 24 patients who were having skin tumors removed at the University of the Ryukyus Hospital. To gather data on chimpanzees, which are some of our closest animal relatives, researchers observed five captive chimps at the Kumamoto Sanctuary of the Kyoto University Wildlife Research Center, which houses animals formerly used in pharmaceutical research. The chimps' wounds, like those of wild baboons, mostly came from tiffs between the animals. The study's other primate subjects, all kept at the Kenya Institute of Primate Research, included olive baboons, Sykes' monkeys and vervet monkeys. Researchers anesthetized the monkeys, surgically wounded them and then monitored their recovery. 'As a field researcher, I personally believe that invasive studies should be minimized as much as possible,' said Dr. Matsumoto-Oda, who noted that bite wounds on wild baboons are often similar in size to the surgical wounds in the study, but deeper. Finally, to compare humans and primates with more distantly related mammals, researchers anesthetized and surgically wounded mice and rats. Based on her field observations, Dr. Matsumoto-Oda was prepared to see humans healing more slowly than the other animals. The 24 people regrew skin at about a quarter of a millimeter per day, on average. What surprised Dr. Matsumoto-Oda more was the consistency between the healing rates of the animal subjects, including chimpanzees. There was no significant difference in the speedy skin regrowth among different primates, which grew about 0.62 millimeters of new skin per day, or between primates and rodents. Humans were the clear outliers. Elaine Fuchs, a stem cell biologist at the Rockefeller University who studies skin growth and repair and was not involved in the new research, said the results were what she would have expected. That's because skin healing depends on hair. Each hair grows from a hair follicle, which also houses stem cells. Normally, those stem cells just make more hair. But when called upon, they can grow new skin instead. 'When the epidermis is wounded, as in most kinds of scratches and scrapes, it's really the hair-follicle stem cells that do the repair,' Dr. Fuchs said. Furry animals are covered in follicles, which help quickly close up wounds in mice or monkeys. By comparison, 'human skin has very puny hair follicles,' Dr. Fuchs said. And our ancestors lost many of those follicles, packing their skin with sweat glands instead. Sweat glands also have stem cells, but they're much less efficient at repairing wounds, Dr. Fuchs said. Why did we make that trade during evolution, giving up so much of our hair and its protective properties? The glands that make the watery, salty sweat that dampens our shirts on a hot day are called eccrine glands. Most furry mammals have them only in certain places, mainly the soles of their paws. But human ancestors went all-in on sweat — modern humans have millions of sweat glands all over our bodies, and they're about 10 times denser than those of chimpanzees. 'We evolved to cool by sweating profusely,' said Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University. Our abundant sweat glands and lack of fur let our ancestors engage in physical activity in hot environments, Dr. Lieberman said, and cooled the machinery of our big brains. The benefits of trading hair for sweat must have outweighed the costs. Dr. Matsumoto-Oda and her co-authors speculate that social support among prehistoric humans might have helped wounded people stay alive, despite our slower healing. (Or maybe they had ways to treat wounds, like orangutans and chimps seem to.) 'The evolutionary disadvantage is that wound healing is slowed,' Dr. Fuchs said, but humans also gained evolutionary advantages by losing hair. 'They can put on a coat if they need to,' she added.
