14 December: Monkey Day

Today is Monkey Day – 10 things you didn’t know about monkeys:

1. A monkey is an animal which belongs to the infra-order Simiiformes. Not all primates are monkeys. Lemurs, lorises, and galagos and tarsiers are not monkeys. While apes, such as chimpanzees and gorillas are often said not to be monkeys either, scientifically speaking, they could be classified as monkeys too – the reason they usually are not is because humans belong to the same family and there has been a resistance to classifying ourselves as monkeys.
2. There are over 260 different species of monkey. Monkeys can be divided into two groups, Old World monkeys that live in Africa and Asia, and New World monkeys that live in South America. A baboon is an example of an Old World monkey, while a marmoset is an example of a New World monkey.
3. The largest species of monkey is the mandrill. An adult male can grow to as much as a meter (3.3 feet) in length and weigh about 35 kilograms (77 pounds). At the other end of the scale, the smallest type of monkey is the pygmy marmoset, which is about 5 inches (12 cm) long. This is about the size of a hamster. The fastest is the patas monkey. It can reach speeds of 34 miles per hour (55 km/h). The loudest is the howler monkey. Males have a call which can be heard three miles away. However, the louder the howler monkey’s call is, the lower its sperm count. The monkey with the longest tail is the spider monkey. Its body is only 2 feet long, but its tail can reach 3 feet in length. Their tails can hold the monkey's entire body weight or pick up items as small as Peanut. The most recently discovered monkey is the lesula monkey, which was discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2007.
4. With so many different types, monkey species are diverse, but some things they all have in common are opposable thumbs and tails which have a patch of bare skin at the tip similar to a human's fingertips. It is sensitive to touch and also has tiny ridges that gives the tail a better grip.
5. The differences? Some live in trees, others on the savannah. Their diets differ, and can include fruit, leaves, seeds, nuts, flowers, eggs, small animals, insects and Spiders. There is one species, the Burmese sneezing monkey, which sneezes whenever it rains. The black snub-nosed monkey lives at the highest altitude of any monkey, at around 15,000 feet (4,572 m). they are only found in the Chinese province of Yunnan.
6. There are numerous words for a group of monkeys. Tribe and troop are the most common, but there’s also mission, barrel, carload, or cartload.
7. Monkeys went into space before humans did – 32 of them in all. Sadly, a lot of them didn’t survive the experience. The first simian astronaut was called Albert; he rode on a V2 rocket in 1948, although he didn’t go high enough to be called the first monkey in space and suffocated during the flight. The following year, Albert II became the first monkey in space but he died on impact on return to Earth. He was followed by several more monkeys called Albert, most of whom came to sad ends due to explosions and parachute failures. The first one to make it back alive was Albert VI in 1951.
8. When researchers offered Japanese macaques sweet potatoes during research in the 1940s, the monkeys learned to wash the dirt off them before eating. This behaviour was passed on to subsequent generations. This has given rise to a phenomenon known as the 100 monkey effect, which states that if 100 monkeys learn to do something new, all monkeys everywhere will suddenly start doing it, even if they have no contact with the original monkeys. In actual fact, no other monkeys in the world are known to wash their food before eating, and there were only 59 monkeys in the study, so there was never a 100^th monkey. Nevertheless the idea has been adopted into New Age mythology as proof that positive change can happen due to the actions of just a few people.
9. A monkey once started a war that killed over 100,000 people. How? It bit the Greek king, Alexander I, who died of sepsis from the bite, and his death started the war.
10. The three wise monkeys which are said to "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" originated in Japan and are collectively known as the Sanzaru.

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