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Apes are the members of the Hominoidea superfamily of primates, including humans. There are two families of hominoids:

• the family Hylobatidae consists of 12 species of gibbons, including the Lar and the Siamang, collectively known as the "lesser apes"
• the family Hominidae consisting of Gorillas, Chimpanzees and BonoboThe Bonobo Pan paniscus , sometimes called the Pygmy Chimpanzee is one of the two species comprising the genus Pan both members of that genus are technically "chimpanzees", though the term is frequently used to refer only to the other member of the genus,s, OrangutanPongo pygmaeus Pongo abelii The Orangutan (also spelt Orang Utan Orang-utan sometimes incorrectly orangutang is a great ape with long arms and reddish, sometimes brown, hair native to Malaysia and Indonesia. Orangutan is derived from the Malay Orang Hutans, and Humans, collectively known as the "great apes".

Except for Gorillas and Humans, all true apes are agile climbers of trees. They are best described as omnivorous, their diet consisting of fruit, grass seeds, and in most cases small quantities of meat (either hunted or scavenged), along with anything else available and easily digested. They are native to Africa and Asia.

Most ape species are rare or endangeredAn endangered species is a species whose population is so small that it is in danger of becoming extinct. Many countries have laws offering special protection to these species (forbidding hunting, banning their habitats from development, etc. to prevent t. The chief threat to most ape species is loss of tropical rainforest habitat, though some populations are further imperiled by hunting for bushmeatBushmeat (from the French "viande de brousse") hunting is common in sub-Saharan Africa's dense forests. It refers to the hunting of any animal which is not traditionally regarded to be a game animal, but is nonetheless edible. The meat may appeal to poor.

1 Biology

The great ape family was previously referred to as Pongidae, and humans (and fossil hominids) were omitted from it, but on grounds of relatedness there is no argument for doing this. Chimpanzees, gorillas, humans and orangutans are all more closely related to one another than any of these four genera are to the gibbons and siamangs. Awkwardly, however, the term "hominid" is still used with the specific meaning of extinct animals more closely related to humans than the other great apes (for example, australopithecineAustralopithecines Austrolopithecus africanus''Hominid Reconstruction Scientific classification Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Primates Family: Hominidae Genus Australopithecus Species A. afarensis ("Lucy") A. africanus ''A.s). It is now usual to use the subfamily Homininae to separate the hominids, in this narrow sense, from the extant non-human members of the family Hominidae.

Current evidence implies that humans share a common, extinct, ancestor with the chimpanzee/bonobo line, from which we separated more recently than the gorilla line. All living members of the Hylobatidae and Hominidae are tailless, and humans can therefore accurately be referred to as bipedal apes. However there are also primates in other families that lack tails.

Both great apes and lesser apes fall within the superfamily Catarrhini, which also includes the Old World monkeys of Africa and Eurasia. Within this group, both families of apes can be distinguished from these monkeys by the number of cusps on their molars (apes have five—the "Y-5" molar pattern, Old World monkeys have only four in a "bilophodont" pattern). Apes have more mobile shoulder joints and arms, ribcages that are flatter front-to-back, and a shorter, less mobile spine compared to Old World monkeys. These are all anatomical adaptations to vertical hanging and swinging locomotion (brachiation) in the apes.

Although the hominoid fossil record is far from complete, and the evidence is often fragmentary, there is enough to give a good outline of the evolutionary history of humans. The time of the split between humans and living apes used to be thought to have occurred 15 to 20 million years ago, or even up to 30 or 40 million years ago. Some apes occurring within that time period, such as Ramapithecus, used to be considered as hominins, and possible ancestors of humans. Later fossil finds indicated that Ramapithecus was more closely related to the orangutan, and new biochemical evidence indicated that the last common ancestor of humans and apes occurred between 5 and 10 million years ago, and probably in the lower end of that range. Ramapithecus therefore is no longer considered a hominin.