Humans are bipedal primates belonging to the species Homo sapiens in Hominidae, the great ape family. Compared to other species,
humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection and problem solving. This mental
capability, combined with an erect body carriage that frees the arms for manipulating objects, has allowed humans to make
far greater use of tools than any other species.
An ape is any member of the Hominoidea superfamily of primates. Due to its ambiguous nature, the term ape is less suitable
as a means of describing taxonomic relationships. Under the current classification system there are two families of hominoids:
the family Hylobatidae consists of 4 genera and 14 species of gibbon, including the Lar Gibbon and the Siamang, collectively
known as the lesser apes.
The Old World monkeys or Cercopithecidae are a group of primates, falling in the superfamily Cercopithecoidea in the clade
Catarrhini. The Old World monkeys are native to Africa and Asia today, inhabiting a range of environments from tropical rain
forest to savanna, scrubland, and mountainous terrain, and are also known from Europe in the fossil record. However, a (possibly
introduced) free-roaming group of monkeys still survives in Gibraltar (Europe) to this day.
The Hominidae (anglicized Hominids, also known as great apes) form a taxonomic family, including four extant genera: chimpanzees,
gorillas, humans and orangutans. A number of known extinct genera are grouped with humans in the Hominina subtribe, others
with orangutans in the Ponginae subtribe. The most recent common ancestor of the Hominidae lived some 13 million years ago,
when the ancestors of the orangutans speciated from the ancestors of the other three genera.
New World monkeys are the five families of primates that are found in Central and South America: Callitrichidae, Cebidae,
Aotidae, Pitheciidae, and Atelidae. The five families are ranked together as the Platyrrhini infraorder and the Ceboidea superfamily,
which are essentially synonymous since Ceboidea is the only living platyrrhine superfamily. They differ from other groupings
of monkeys and primates, such as the Old World monkeys and the apes.
Homo erectus is an extinct species of the genus Homo, which originated in Africa and to have spread as far as China and Java.
Amongst scientists it is uncontroversially considered to be a direct ancestor of modern humans. H. erectus originally migrated
from Africa during the Early Pleistocene, possibly as a result of the operation of the Saharan pump, around 2.0 million years
ago, and dispersed throughout much of the Old World.
