What is the Difference between Apes and Monkeys?

Monkeys and Apes both are both primates. Primates are smart animals that are clever, intelligent and have big brains just like humans. Even humans come under the ape family. Apart from humans, chimpanzees, gibbons, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas fall under apes.

Do you often get confused whether a macaque is a monkey, a gibbon is an ape, a lemur is neither a monkey nor an ape? If yes, then after reading this entire guide, you will find the difference between them as both of them have major differences. What makes both of them different?

Almost every species of monkey has a tail, while apes do not. However, there is an example of one spice of monkey that does not have a tail which is a Barbary macaque. These monkeys live in Algerian and Moroccan forest and fall under monkeys, which is an exception.

For monkeys, trees serve as the primary source of their livelihood. Like most of their lives, they live on trees as it provides them with food, shelter, and protection from predators. Monkeys like to move freely from one tree to another. Whereas apes are fine living on the ground as well, unlike monkeys.

Although monkeys and apes have the potential to communicate well with gestures and signs, whereas apes have demonstrated better communication power and have higher cognitive abilities than monkeys, some apes are even known for learning human signs. Also, many species of apes exhibit some use of tools, unlike monkeys.

Apes are larger in size and have broad chests and shoulder joints, while monkeys have predominantly smaller built and are narrow-chested. You may recognize this minute difference only if you know it beforehand and then compare them, which are apes have an appendix and monkeys do not have one.

Apes have broad chests than monkeys that allows them to swing smoothly through trees. Although the monkeys have the same ability, mostly monkeys are known for running across branches rather than swinging. Also, monkeys have a skeletal structure similar to cats, and dogs that make them run across four limbs across tree branches, while apes can walk on two limbs.