Mammals

Ape

Hominoidea · also called apes, great apes, lesser apes

Endangered ↓ omnivoreherbivore Rainforest Temperate forest

An ape is a primate without a tail, built around a body that once swung through the treetops: a broad chest, a shoulder that rotates freely and lifts overhead, and a stiff back. The apes split into the small, fast, singing gibbons and the great apes — orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and, sitting squarely inside that group, humans.

Overview

Apes are the superfamily Hominoidea, in two families: the lesser apes (gibbons and the siamang, ~20 species, Southeast Asia) and the great apes (orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, humans). Non-human apes live in the rainforests of central and western Africa and Southeast Asia, eating mostly fruit and leaves — gorillas nearly vegetarian, chimpanzees omnivorous and regular hunters of monkeys.

What makes an ape

No tail, and a shoulder and chest inherited from a brachiating ancestor that let apes hang and move hand-over-hand. Apes grow up slowly, live 40–60 years, have large brains, and several show tool use and culture — chimpanzee communities have their own learned tool kits. Gibbons are the acrobats, swinging at up to 55 km/h and singing territorial duets.

Very close to us

Humans are apes, inside the great-ape family, sharing about 98.8% of DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos and a common ancestor 6–7 million years ago — closer than either is to the gorilla.

Status

Every non-human ape is threatened. All six great-ape species are Endangered or Critically Endangered, the Tapanuli orangutan (under 800 left) most of all, and gibbons like the Hainan gibbon (~40 animals) are among the rarest mammals. The causes are rainforest clearing for oil palm and timber, bushmeat hunting, the infant trade, and disease — Ebola has killed roughly a third of gorillas in some regions.

Ape: common questions

What is the difference between an ape and a monkey?

The clearest single difference is the tail — monkeys almost always have one, apes never do. Apes also have a distinctive body built around a tree-swinging ancestry, with a broad chest, shoulder blades on the back rather than the sides, and a shoulder joint that allows the arm to swing overhead and rotate freely, so apes can hang and move hand-over-hand beneath branches. Monkeys have a narrower, deeper chest and shoulders set for running along the tops of branches on all fours. Apes are generally larger, slower to mature, longer-lived, and have larger brains for their body size, with more flexible problem-solving and, in several species, tool use and culture. Evolutionarily, apes arose from within the Old World monkey group, so an ape can be thought of as a large, tailless, big-brained offshoot of the monkeys.

Are humans apes?

Yes. In every modern classification humans are placed inside the great ape family, Hominidae, alongside orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. Genetically and anatomically, humans are most similar to chimpanzees and bonobos, sharing close to 99 percent of protein-coding DNA and a common ancestor that lived about 6 to 7 million years ago, which makes chimpanzees and bonobos more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas. Humans share the ape traits of no tail, an overhead-swinging shoulder, a large brain, and slow development. What is distinctive about humans, full upright walking, language, and technology, sits on top of an unmistakably ape body and ape ancestry.

What is the difference between great apes and lesser apes?

The great apes are the large-bodied apes, the orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans, in the family Hominidae. The lesser apes are the gibbons and the siamang, about 20 small species in the family Hylobatidae, native to Southeast Asian rainforest. Lesser apes weigh 5 to 12 kilograms, against 30 to 200 kilograms for the great apes, they are supreme brachiators that swing through the canopy at high speed, they live in small monogamous family groups that sing loud territorial duets, and they never build the sleeping nests that great apes make each night. The term lesser refers only to size, not to intelligence or importance.

Why are all the apes endangered?

Because they combine slow reproduction with acute vulnerability to the way tropical forests are being used. Apes live almost entirely in rainforest, which is being cleared at speed for oil palm and other plantations, timber, mining, roads, and farmland, and once the forest is fragmented, ape groups are cut off and cannot disperse. On top of habitat loss, apes are hunted for bushmeat and their infants are taken for the pet trade, usually after the mother is killed, and they are highly susceptible to human diseases, with Ebola outbreaks having killed large numbers of gorillas and chimpanzees. Because a female ape produces only one slow-growing offspring every few years, populations cannot absorb these losses, which is why species after species has slid into the Endangered and Critically Endangered categories.

Sources & further reading

Written by HideShark Editorial Team · reviewed by HideShark Science Desk. Published September 10, 2026. Last updated September 10, 2026.

Quick facts

Scientific name: Hominoidea
Diet: Chiefly fruit and leaves, with gorillas eating large amounts of foliage and stems, orangutans and gibbons heavily fruit-based, and chimpanzees and bonobos adding insects, honey, and, in chimpanzees, regular hunting of monkeys and other small mammals, so the group ranges from near-vegetarian to omnivorous
No tail, and a shoulder for hanging: Apes are distinguished from monkeys by having no tail at all and by a mobile shoulder joint, a broad flat chest, and a stiff lower back inherited from a tree-swinging ancestor, which lets them raise the arm fully overhead, rotate it, and hang or move hand-over-hand beneath branches in a way monkeys cannot
Two families: The living apes are the lesser apes, family Hylobatidae, the roughly 20 species of gibbon and the siamang of Southeast Asia, and the great apes, family Hominidae, which contains the orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans
Gibbons are the acrobats: Gibbons are the fastest and most agile non-flying tree animals, swinging through the forest canopy by brachiation at up to 55 km per hour and crossing gaps of 10 m or more, and they live in small family groups that defend a territory with loud, complex, sex-specific songs delivered as duets
Tool use and culture: Chimpanzees fish for termites with stripped twigs, crack nuts with stone hammers and anvils, and hunt cooperatively, and different chimpanzee communities have different tool kits and customs that are learned rather than instinctive, which is regarded as culture, while orangutans and gorillas also use tools in the wild and captivity
Very close to humans: Humans are apes, sitting within the great ape family and sharing about 98.8 percent of their DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos, from which the human lineage separated roughly 6 to 7 million years ago, closer than either is to the gorilla
Slow lives: Apes grow up slowly, with a female orangutan giving birth only about once every 7 to 8 years, the longest interval of any mammal, and great apes commonly live 40 to 60 years, which combined with small populations makes them extremely slow to recover from losses
Range: The tropical forests of central and western Africa for gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos, the islands of Borneo and Sumatra for orangutans, and the rainforests of Southeast Asia from northeastern India and southern China through Indochina to Borneo and Java for the gibbons, generally in lowland and hill rainforest and, for some gorillas and gibbons, montane and bamboo forest, with humans, the seventh ape, worldwide.
Conservation status: Endangered ↓ ≈ Every non-human ape is threatened. All six non-human great ape species, the Bornean, Sumatran, and Tapanuli orangutans, the western and eastern gorillas, and the chimpanzee and bonobo, are listed as Endangered or Critically Endangered, and the Tapanuli orangutan, with fewer than 800 individuals, is the most endangered great ape. Among the gibbons, most species are threatened and several, including the Hainan gibbon with around 40 animals, are Critically Endangered. The causes are the clearing of tropical forest for oil palm, timber, mining, and farming, hunting for bushmeat and the live-infant trade, and disease, with Ebola having killed roughly a third of the world's gorillas in some regions in the wild