Facts about Monkey

The scientific name for New World monkey, Platyrrhini, means "flat nosed," therefore the noses are flatter, with side facing nostrils, compared to the narrow noses of the Old World monkey.

The subfamily Colobinae make up most of the Asian genera, but also include the African colobus monkeys.

Some were later transferred to domestic zoos, and in fact many modern captive monkeys in the United Kingdom are descended from individuals captured during the Napoleonic and Victorian eras.

The New World monkeys are found in Mexico, Central America, and South America, and the Old World monkeys are located in Africa, central to southern Asia, Japan, and India.

The owl monkey sees only in black and white (monochromatic).

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the name monkey may come from a German version of the Reynard the Fox fable, published in the late sixteenth century.

Monkeys range from the size of a mouse to that of a medium-sized dog.

Most New World monkeys have long, often prehensile tails.

All monkeys use their hands and feet for holding onto branches.

Monkeys raised as pets are often given to zoos and sanctuaries when they get older, though some people report having long and rewarding relationships with monkeys.

Howler monkeys have trichromatic, or three-color vision, having light sensitive cells in the retina that can distinguish blue, green, and red colors.

A monkey is any member of two of the three groupings of simian primates, the New World monkeys and the Old World monkeys.

The following list shows where the various monkey families are placed in the primate classification.

Many are small, arboreal (live in trees), and nocturnal (active at night), so scientists' knowledge of them is less comprehensive than that of the more easily observed Old World monkeys.

The Atelidae family includes the howler, spider, and woolly monkeys.

Some monkeys are arboreal (living in trees), while others, like macaques and baboons, spend more time on the ground.

According to Trivedi (2003), New World monkeys have a broad range of vision types.

The New World monkeys are the four families of primates, the Cebidae, Aotidae, Pitheciidae, and Atelidae, that are found in Central and South America (Groves 2001).

The Cebidae family includes marmosets, tamarins, capuchins, and squirrel monkeys.

Humans and monkeys are so similar that researchers even study behaviors of monkeys, such as a sense of "fairness," to try and better understand the origin of human behaviors (see below).

Apes, such as chimpanzees and gibbons, are sometimes incorrectly called monkeys because of their similarity to monkeys.

The Old World monkeys or Cercopithecidae are a group of primates, falling in two subfamilies in the clade Catarrhini (Groves 2001).

A group of monkeys is called a mission or a tribe.

Colobus monkeys have a stub for a thumb.

The biological order primates is divided informally into three main groupings: prosimians, monkeys of the New World, and monkeys and apes of the Old World.

The Old World monkeys are native to Africa and Asia today, but are also known from Europe in the fossil record.

The proboscis monkey has an extraordinary nose while snub-nosed monkeys have almost no nose at all.

The term moraine is of French origin; it was coined by peasants to describe alluvial embankments and rims found near the margins of glaciers in the French Alps.

Macaques, especially rhesus monkeys, and African green monkeys are widely used in animal testing facilities.

All New World monkeys differ slightly from Old World monkeys in many aspects, but the most prominent of which is the nose.

The Aotidae family includes night or owl monkeys.

Use of monkeys in laboratories is highly controversial.

When the British first began to explore Africa, young monkeys were often captured to provide entertainment during long voyages.