Which Primate Am I? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Orangutan

My name means "person of the forest" in Malay, although the Malay people prefer to call me mawas. I walk on my fists, not on my knuckles like other apes. The harvesting of palm trees for their oil is destroying my habitat. Please check your "healthfoods" as well as your junk foods for "palm oil" and the like.

Edgar Allan Poe loved to use the exotic "ourang-outang" in his stories, such as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) and "Hop-Frog" (1849).

Answer: The common chimpanzee

The common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is both arboreal and terrestrial, quite aggressive, and very adaptable. Chimps prefer fruit, but will eat almost anything, including insects, birds' eggs, and small mammals. They are highly territorial and may kill outsider chimps, and they have been observed using tools, including spears!

The pygmy chimpanzee is a deprecated term for another species of primate (though in the same genus, Pan). Oftentimes, "chimp" or even "chimpanzee" refers simply to the common chimpanzee.

Answer: Bonobo

Formerly called the pygmy chimpanzee or the gracile chimpanzee, the bonobo (Pan paniscus) is far less aggressive than the common chimpanzee, mainly because conflict resolution is achieved through frequent copulation. Also unlike its larger relative, the bonobo lives in a matriarchal society.

It is chiefly found in the Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although they could be called "chimps", the word is usually reserved for the common chimpanzee.

Answer: Gorilla

The Holocene epoch began around twelve thousand years ago and continues to the present. So the largest primate would be the gorilla, or Gorilla gorilla scientifically. There are three races of Gorilla gorilla, two lowland gorillas and one mountain gorilla.

The word comes from an African word for a wild, hairy person as documented in Hanno's voyage of the 5th or 6th century B.C. Unlike common chimpanzees, gorillas are primarily vegetarians and relatively peaceful.

Answer: Gibbon

Gibbons are considered "lesser apes" rather than "great apes". They consist of the family Hylobatidae, genus Hylobates, and several species, including the white-handed gibbon, the lar gibbon, and the hoolock. Gibbons lack tails but who needs a tail when you have arms longer than the rest of you? The name gibbon originates from a French derivation of an Indian dialect word

Answer: Siamang

Siamangs are in the same family as gibbons, Hylobatidae, and are often referred to as a kind of gibbon, but they have their own genus, Symphalangus. The swelling of the male's throat sac is impressive, as it grows nearly as big as his head!

Answer: Macaque

In addition to Gibraltar, in the southern tip of the Iberian peninsula, Barbary macaques are also found in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria and Morocco. They live in matriarchal troops in which males participate in rearing young, unlike other species of macaque such as Japanese or Tibetan. Macaques are the only monkey species native to Europe.

Answer: Baboon

Callosities are thickened and hardened parts of the skin. These nerveless pads of skin make sitting more comfortable. Baboons live in hierarchical troops in Arabia and in the savannas of Africa. Other than man, they fear the lion and the hyena, but they will fight the leopard.

Answer: Mandrill

Mandrills are West African baboon relatives with the brightly colored features described. Indeed, Charles Darwin observed that no other mammal "is coloured in so extraordinary a manner as the adult male mandrills". Sometimes the terms "baboon" and "mandrill" are used interchangeably although they are not quite the same.

For example, while both species are terrestrial, mandrills will spend more time than baboons in trees. The mandrill is largest monkey on Earth and is found in Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and the Congo.

Answer: Lion tamarin

Lion tamarins (Leontopithecus) have distinctive, magnificent "manes", and the golden lion tamarin in particular (L. rosalia) really does resemble a cute, miniature lion. Other kinds of tamarin also have plenty of hair; for example, the emperor tamarin (Saguinus imperator) has a distinct "moustache". All species of tamarin are diurnal and arboreal, and will eat almost anything.

They range throughout the rainforests of Central America and South America, especially in the Amazon Basin and the Guianas. Like other New World monkeys, they can grasp with their tails.

Answer: Capuchin monkey

Because of their little cap like a monk's cowl, these monkeys were named after the Capuchin friars, Franciscans who observed a very strict rule and wore distinctive sharp-pointed hoods. Capuchins are among the most intelligent and trainable of the monkeys. Like other New World monkeys, they are platyrrhines, meaning they have flat noses, and they sport prehensile tails.

(Have a care! Don't you know you're gonna shock the monkey?)

Answer: Lemur

Lemurs are prosimians, which means they are more primitive than apes or monkeys. They are also strepsirrhines, which means they have wet noses like dogs, unlike haplorrhines (dry-nosed apes and monkeys). They can also manufacture their own vitamin C. The most commonly-seen species in zoos in North America are the ruffed lemur and the ring-tailed lemur.

Raccoons are ring-tailed, but they are not primates! I hope you did not select that one!

Answer: Bushbaby

The bushbaby or galago is small, woolly, and long-tailed, with large eyes and oversized ears. Lorises are strepsirrhines that live in the forests of Sri Lanka, India and southeast Asia. The aye-aye lives in Madagascar, and is actually considered a kind of lemur, and is unfortunately hunted by superstitious locals. The muriki is a critically endangered monkey (not a prosimian) found only in Brazil. Formerly called the woolly spider monkey, the name has been deprecated because the muriki is related neither to the spider monkey (Ateles) nor to the woolly monkey (Lagothrix).

Answer: Tarsier

Like other haplorrhines, or dry-nosed primates (monkeys and apes), the tarsier has a reduced dependence on smell and an increased dependence on vision. It can turn its head nearly 180 degrees in each direction. Tarsiers are found only in southeast Asian islands of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, where there is a well-known sanctuary. The tarsier is the only primate to be exclusively carnivorous.

Answer: Man

Although historically I have considered myself apart from the apes, by the third millennium A.D. I had been reclassified as a great ape, of the family Hominidae. Consequently, "hominid" is now synonymous with "great ape", which now includes the genera for chimps and bonobos (Pan), gorillas (Gorilla), orangutans (Pongo), and humans (Homo). Like all other hominids, I have downward nostrils and flat fingernails, I have no tail, and I am primarily terrestrial and diurnal (the invention of the electric lightbulb notwithstanding).

Macaques, for your information, are the second-most widespread primate on Earth (though they are Old World monkeys, not apes).

In the movie "Planet of the Apes" (1968), the sacred scrolls warned, "Beware the beast Man.... Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. ...Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death." We have the power to change the ending of the story!