monkey, in general, any of nearly 200 species of tailed primate, with the exception

of lemurs, tarsiers, and lorises. The presence of a tail (even if only a tiny nub), along with their
narrow-chested bodies and other features of the skeleton, distinguishes monkeys from apes.
Most monkeys have a short, relatively flat face without great prominence of the muzzle,
although baboons and mandrills are notable exceptions. The vast majority of species live
in tropical forests, where they move on all four limbs. All but the durukuli of tropical Central and
South America are active during the day, moving frequently in bands as they search for
vegetation, birds’ eggs, smaller animals, and insects to eat. Monkeys are capable of sitting
upright, and, consequently, their hands are freed for many manipulative tasks. Except for a few
Old World forms, monkeys are predominantly arboreal, leaping from limb to limb in their travels
among the trees. Their hands and feet are both used for grasping and typically have five digits,
the thumb and big toe being divergent from the others. Commonly, the digits have
flattened nails, but the marmosets have claws on all digits except the big toe, which bears a nail.
On the ground, monkeys walk with the entire sole of the foot touching the ground but with the
palm of the hand raised. They almost never walk on two legs (bipedally) and can stand erect for
only short periods, if at all.

common squirrel monkeyCommon squirrel monkeys have olive or grayish crowns and are found
only in South America.

Monkeys have large brains and are known for their inquisitiveness and intelligence. Brain
development, combined with the freeing of the hands and well-developed vision, allows them a
great latitude of activity. Most are good at solving complex problems and learning from
experience, but they do not quite reach the cognitive levels of great apes. Some, especially
the capuchins (genus Cebus), spontaneously use objects as tools (e.g., stones to crack nuts).
Others, such as baboons, readily learn to use sticks to obtain food. However, in strong contrast
to the great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans), most monkeys do not appear to be
very good at learning from each others’ experience—individuals more or less have to learn new
behaviours for themselves. A significant exception is the Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata).
In field experiments, these monkeys were introduced to new foods such as sweet potatoes and
candies wrapped in paper. Once a few individuals had solved the problems of getting at the new
foods, their innovations gradually spread throughout entire troops. These experiments have
had implications in redefining cultural behaviour.

mandrillMandrill (Mandrillus sphinx).

Monkeys are highly social animals, and almost all live in troops consisting of several females
with young and either a single male (as in hamadryas baboons, mandrills, most guenons, and
most langurs) or several males (as in savannah baboons and macaques). Usually, but not
universally, the females stay in the troop in which they were born and are thus closely related to
each other. Males join new troops on maturity, and so they are unrelated to each other and
somewhat antagonistic. Like humans and apes, female monkeys nurse their young and have
a menstrual cycle, albeit less copious. In some species, sexual activity is strictly confined to the
period around ovulation (estrus); in others, there appears to be little or no restriction. Some
species breed all year round; others have a period several months long during which they
experience no sexual cycles (anestrus).
Britannica Quiz

Match the Baby Animal to Its Mama Quiz

Old World monkeys versus New World monkeys

saki; macaqueFrom left, head of a saki (Pithecia) and a macaque (Macaca).

Monkeys are arranged into two main groups: Old World and New World. Old World monkeys all
belong to one family, Cercopithecidae, which is related to apes and humans, and together they
are classified as catarrhines (meaning “downward-nosed” in Latin). The New World monkeys are
the platyrrhines (“flat-nosed”), a group comprising five families. As their taxonomic names
suggest, New World (platyrrhine) and Old World (catarrhine) monkeys are distinguished by the
form of the nose. New World monkeys have broad noses with a wide septum separating
outwardly directed nostrils, whereas Old World monkeys have narrow noses with a thin septum
and downward-facing nostrils, as do apes and humans. Old World monkeys have hard, bare
“sitting pads” (ischial callosities) on the buttocks; New World monkeys lack these. Many Old
World monkeys have thumbs that can be opposed to the other fingers and so can handle small
objects precisely. None of the New World monkeys has such manual dexterity. Indeed, in the
hands of many species, the main divergence is between the index and middle fingers; in a few
species, the thumb is reduced or even absent. Some New World monkey species have
prehensile tails capable of supporting the entire body weight or of grasping, for example, a
proffered peanut. No Old World monkeys have this ability, and macaques are nearly tailless.

cotton-top tamarinCotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) used in an experiment to determine

New World monkeys live primarily in tropical South America, especially the Amazon rainforests;
the range of a few species extends northward as far as southern Mexico or southward into
northern Argentina. Among the smaller New World forms that have endeared themselves to
humans with their antics and their tamability are the alert marmosets, often tufted and
colourfully arrayed, and the inquisitive squirrel, woolly, and capuchin monkeys—all of which
exhibit in marked degree the curiosity and cleverness ascribed to monkeys generally. Larger
New World species include the acrobatic spider monkeys and the noisy howlers. Other New
World monkeys include uakaris, sakis, and titis.
moustached monkey (Cercopithecus cephus)The moustached monkey (Cercopithecus cephus) is
a species of guenon.

Old World monkeys live throughout Africa, on the Red Sea coast of Arabia, and in Asia from
Afghanistan to Japan and southeast to the islands of the Philippines, Celebes, Bacan, and Timor.
Some Old World monkeys have been successfully naturalized in Gibraltar, France, Mauritius,
Belau, and a few islands of the West Indies. Old World monkeys include many that are often
seen in zoos, especially the beautifully coloured African guenons (e.g., mona, diana, white-
nosed, green, vervet, and grivet monkeys), colobus, mangabeys, and the chiefly
Asiatic macaques. The macaques include the Barbary “ape” of North Africa and the Rock of
Gibraltar—the only macaque outside Asia and the only wild monkey inhabiting any part of
Europe today—and the rhesus monkey of the Indian subcontinent, which has been used
considerably in medical research. The graceful langurs include the hanuman, or sacred monkey,
also of southern Asia. Among the more unusual monkeys are the large and strikingly coloured
African drills and mandrills, the proboscis monkey of Borneo, and the rare and bizarre snub-
nosed monkeys of China and Vietnam. The Old World monkeys are divided into two subfamilies:
Cercopithecinae and Colobinae. The cercopithecines have cheek pouches, in which they store
food; these include baboons, macaques, guenons, and their relatives. The colobines lack cheek
pouches but have complicated three- or four-chambered stomachs, where bacterial
fermentation of cellulose and hemicellulose occurs and thereby enriches the nutrient content of
their diet, which consists partially of leaves and seeds. Colobines include colobus monkeys,
langurs, and their relatives.

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Because the ecological niches that they occupy are similar, there are many parallels between
Old and New World monkeys. In particular, the squirrel monkeys (genus Saimiri) of the New
World and the talapoin (genus Miopithecus) of West-Central Africa are remarkably convergent;
both are small (about 1 kg [2.2 pounds]) and greenish, live in large troops along rivers, and
breed seasonally. Other aspects of each group’s evolution, however, are unique. No New World
monkey lives on the savanna or has a multichambered cellulose-fermenting stomach, and no
Old World monkey is nocturnal like the durukuli. The closest analogue to the complex society of
the spider monkey is found not in an Old World monkey but in the chimpanzee.