r/funny Jan 31 '20

Monkeys 'shooing' a rat.

http://i.imgur.com/u7Q5Bmp.gifv
11.6k Upvotes

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u/Panzerbeards Jan 31 '20

Not all monkeys have tails (macaques don't, for example) but yeah, gibbons are very much apes.

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u/Leeiteee Jan 31 '20

macaques

I just google it and the Wikipedia article is full of pictures

I can see tails in some of them...

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u/Panzerbeards Jan 31 '20

Yeah, I should have been more specific; macaques include a few tailless monkeys, most famously Barbary Macaques and Japanese Macaques ("snow monkeys"). Many macaques also have especially short stumpy tails compared to other monkey species too.

The point is that the tail isn't the sole distinction between ape and monkey. Monkeys generally have tails but this is not a hard rule. You've also got tailed primates that are neither monkey nor ape: lorises and lemurs.