Interesting facts about apes

• The true apes are all larger animals with no visible tail, and with the exception of the gibbon a rather thin coat of hair.
• Men shares with apes many bodily similarities, including the same blood group system and the fact that both can catch the same diseases.
• "Ape", from Old English apa, is possibly an onomatopoetic imitation of animal chatter.
• Apes' arms are very long and strong. Their legs by comparison are small and weak.
• The hands of apes have become specialised hooks for hanging on to branches; their feet, however, have retained much flexibility and they can hold and examine objects with their big toes to a much greater extent than they can with their thumbs.
• Except for gorillas and humans, all true apes are agile climbers of trees.
• The gorilla is the largest of the apes and may weigh as much as 220 kilograms (500 pounds).
• Gorillas travel through the forests in family parties, active during the daytime and sleeping at night in nests made in the trees of woven branches.
• Gibbons are the smallest and lightest in weight of the apes and are the most highly acrobatic, swinging and leaping at very great speed through the treetops.
• Chimpanzees are much smaller and more agile than gorillas.
• Gibbons are capable of running upright on the ground or along a big branch, holding their arms out to balance themselves. They are noisy, sociable animáis, with few natural enemies in their forest home.
• The orangutan, which comes from Sumatra and Borneo, is a slow-moving heavyweight animal, keeping to the trees as much as possible, for it cannot move easily on the ground. Its food is mainly fruit and some invertebrates.
• Most nonhuman ape species are rare or endangered.
• A group of apes may be referred to as a troop or a shrewdness.