Apes and monkeys are more closely related to humans than any other animal. They are also called primates. Primates are mammals that have ad...
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Apes and monkeys are more closely related to humans than any other animal. They are also called primates.
Primates are mammals that have adapted to living in trees and in some cases, on the ground as well. Apes, lemurs and gorillas are all primates. But the most common primates are human beings.
The biggest primate of all is the gorilla, found in Africa. It weighs 3,000 times as much as the grey mouse lemur of Madagascar which is the smallest primate.
Just like people, monkeys live in families. A really big troop might comprise as many as 50 monkeys headed by a male leader.
Lemurs are small primates that live only on the island of Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean.
Orang-utan, one of the highly endangered primates of Malaysia, have features similar to human beings. The name, thus, is made up of two Malay words 8212; orang-man8217; and utan-forest8217;.
Chimpanzees are among the most clever animals in the world. They even make tools by ripping the leaves off thinsticks and poking them into termite hills to draw out termites.
The proboscis monkey gets it8217;s name because of it8217;s large nose proboscis. In the breeding season the male with the largest nose is the one most females choose to mate with.
The howler monkey of South America has a voice louder than any other animal of its size. The loud noise is caused by a thin hollow shell of bone in its tongue which acts as an amplifier.
All monkeys are fast learners, but macaques are especially clever. They pick up tricks from each other very quickly indeed. A crab-eating macaque learns from its parents how to fish for crabs and how to get the meat out of its shell. The lion-tailed macaque is only found in Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
