Apes are actually more than what you think they are

Apes are humanity's closest living relatives. In fact, people are apes; humans share about 98 percent of their DNA with chimpanzees. The non-human types of apes are divided into two groups: great apes — gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees and orangutans — and lesser apes — gibbons and siamangs

Fun Facts about Apes;

1. Adult male orangutans inflate a pouch in their throat to make a deep noise. This noise can be heard almost one mile.

2. Baby orangutans stay with their mother until they are 6 or 7 years old.

3. Gorillas live in big families called harems.

4. Chimpanzees have the same blood type as humans.

5. Bonobos use sticks as weapons.

People often confuse apes and monkeys. Although there are a number of differences between apes and monkeys (apes have a longer lifespan, larger body size, larger brain-to-body size ratio, and higher intelligence); the main difference is that monkeys have tails and apes do not have tails.

The difference between great apes and lesser apes is general size. There are two types of lesser apes: gibbons (SE Asia) and siamangs (SE Asia). There are four types of great apes: gorillas (Africa), bonobos (Africa), orangutans (SE Asia), and chimpanzees (Africa).

The gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo, and orangutan are called great apes in recognition of their comparatively large size and humanlike features; the gibbons are called lesser apes. The great apes are much more intelligent than monkeys and gibbons. Great apes, for example, are able to recognize themselves in mirrors (monkeys and other nonhumans cannot, with the exception of bottlenose dolphins). They can also reason abstractly, learn quasi-linguistic communication, at least when taught by humans, and learn in captivity to make simple tools (though some populations of orangutans and chimpanzees make tools in the wild). The great apes were formerly classified in their own family, Pongidae, but, because of their extremely close relation to humans and the fact that orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees are not as closely related to each other as chimpanzees are to humans, all are now grouped with humans in the family Hominidae. Within this family, gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans make up the subfamily Homininae, while orangutans are placed in their own subfamily, Ponginae. Within Homininae, humans are often placed in their own “tribe,” Hominini. Also placed in distinct tribes are gorillas (tribe Gorillini) and chimpanzees (tribe Panini). All nonhuman apes have been classified as endangered species.

Except for gorillas and humans, hominoids are agile climbers of trees. Apes eat a variety of plant and animal foods, with the majority of food being plant foods, which can include fruits, leaves, stalks, roots and seeds, including nuts and grass seeds. Human diets are sometimes substantially different from that of other hominoids due in part to the development of technology and a wide range of habitation. Humans are by far the most numerous of the hominoid species, in fact outnumbering all other primates by a factor of several thousand to one.

All non-human hominoids are rare and threatened with extinction. The eastern hoolock gibbon is the least threatened, only being vulnerable to extinction. Five gibbon species are critically endangered, as are all species of orangutan and gorilla. The remaining species are endangered. The chief threat to most of the endangered species is loss of tropical rainforest habitat, though some populations are further imperiled by hunting for bushmeat. The great apes of Africa are also facing threat from the Ebola virus. Currently considered to be the greatest threat to survival of African apes, Ebola infection is responsible for the death of at least one third of all gorillas and chimpanzees since 1990.