Well, I think it’s more complicated. For monkeys this is the Simiiformes, which includes the apes. Informal animal education/educators work very hard to educate children and the public on the differences between primates. This nested hierarchical system is the mainstay of biological taxonomy – each individual fits in its species (with the possible exception of hybrids), each species in its genus, each genus in its family and so on. Dictionaries can be slow to incorporate findings from taxonomy, but it happens all the time. Interesting to note that Monkey was the son of Martin the Ape. It's been revealed that under the goggles of Blue Pants monkeys, they have the same eyes as Light Blue Pants monkeys. And right there your entire argument falls flat on its face. But maybe you should think a bit more about the immediate good of such a declaration would do for nonhumans than how right smartass humans would be, because one of us is pretty much a plague at this point and the other is on the verge of disappearing and could really do with some assistance, grammar and scientific clarification be damned. If that’s true then I can call myself a fish…. I’d argue that, cladistically-speaking, monkey is an obsolete term, but that’s my opinion and I’m not really aware of much of a consensus either way . Therefore there is a good argument for aligning common terms with taxonomic ones, to facilitate this process. Unless you call all monkeys great, that sounds a lot like a name for apes.

Philipp. There has been resistance to directly designate apes (and thus humans) as monkeys, so "Old World monkey" may be taken to mean the Cercopithecoidea or the Catarrhini. All are in the same infraorder “Simiiformes”. The simple fact is that this whole discussion has been raised because Graham Smith published an article in which he refer to apes as monkeys, which demonstrates that monkey is indeed used as a generic term to refer to apes. Apes are found only in Africa and Asia, whilst monkeys live in Central and South America as well as Africa and Asia. When moving through trees apes use their arms to swing from branch to branch (a movement known as brachiating) and have evolved shoulder joints to help them do this. 2) ‘monkey’ is given taxonomic equivalence with a clade, so it can be meaningfully used in science (in which case the clade needs to be identified). I don’t know anyone who commonly refers to an ape as a monkey. Indian Twitter Users Are Feeling The Weight Of 2020 In This New Trending Meme, "Haikyuu!! Here is how it works. So wasp is not an equivalent of Hymenoptera or Apocrita.

Apes (Hominoidea) are a branch of Old World tailless simians native to Africa and Southeast Asia. Ape Escape: Pumped & Primed ~Sound Tracks! This means that scientists prefer to base names for groups on clear monophyletic clades.

I think monkey came into English from the Germanic influence – in fact the etymology that I’ve found has the following: In a 1498 Low German version of the popular medieval beast story “Roman de Renart” (“Reynard the Fox”), Moneke is the name given to the son of Martin the Ape.

The term ‘great apes’ refers to a sub-category of apes known as Hominidae, made up of orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, gorillas, and us – humans (basically all apes except the gibbon family). They’re smaller, they have tails and they have different behaviors. So my problem with calling apes monkeys isn’t about technicalities, or about feeling superior. I am not saying that apes should be called monkeys – since apes form a valid clade. That doesn’t necessarily mean that monkey has to be paraphyletic too, of course, but I note that the Concise OED defines the word ‘monkey’ as meaning “a small to medium sized primate typically having a long tail … [Familes Cebidae and Callitrichidae (New World) and Cercipthecidae (Old World)]”. If we go with option 1 there is no need to tell people to not call apes monkeys. And both realms influence mutually and evolve together. The technical accuracy and up-to-date taxonomy of that definition might be challenged, but its clear that they are referring to a paraphyletic assemblage that excludes apes. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. That doesn’t stop apes (including humans) from being monkeys however. Sorry if I didn’t make it more clear. Interesting that you think that a name predating cladistic methods shouldn’t be altered to best fit phylogeny – in that case ‘ape’ also becomes invalid as there is a non-Hominoidea primate referred to in the Linnean system as an ape (the Barbary Ape, Macaca sylvanus). I must make it clear that I have been using the term monkey as a direct match for the term Simiiformes. This is an English term.