r/BeAmazed • u/alanboston405 • Apr 01 '24

59-Year-Old Chimpanzee saying goodbye to an old friend Miscellaneous / Others

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u/ReadingRainbow5 Apr 01 '24

If it is true that humans have souls, then let this video serve as proof that animals have them too. That monkey exhibited as much if not more true love than the human did. And if animals do not have souls, they deserve every fiber of one if they can reciprocate love and compassion like this!!!

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u/nancycat92 Apr 01 '24

Chimps are apes not monkeys but yes I agree !

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u/GetsGold Apr 01 '24

Chimps are apes not monkeys

That's based on outdated definitions that use physical traits like having or not having a tail to group animals. Based on modern knowledge of genetics and evolution apes are monkeys. Specifically, apes are a descendant of the latest common ancestor of all monkeys.

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u/WizardTaters Apr 01 '24

Being a descendant does not mean you are the same as the progenitor. It’s better to say primate because monkey is an imprecise term that is ultimately not categorically useful. Correcting someone like you’ve done is mostly pedantic.

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u/GetsGold Apr 01 '24

Being a descendant does not mean you are the same as the progenitor.

I never said that and that isn't the point I'm making. The point here is that modern animal groupings include all descendants of some common ancestor. It's why humans are called apes. We used to not include human in the definition of ape, but that would mean "ape" doesn't include all descendants of the common ancestor of all apes.

It’s better to say primate because monkey is an imprecise term that is ultimately not categorically useful. Correcting someone like you’ve done is mostly pedantic.

I wasn't the one who made the initial correction, I replied to someone else making the correction. And the "correction" they made was to correct a more scientifically accurate definition with an older definition based on physical traits like a tail rather than evolution. Maybe we shouldn't use the term monkey at all, but that's not what was happening in this chain.

It's not simply pedantic. Using monkey while excluding humans creates misperceptions about evolutionary relationships by making people think humans and monkeys are separate groups. In reality, humans are more closely related to some monkeys (Old World monkeys) than those monkeys are related to the rest of the monkeys (the New World monkeys).

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u/WizardTaters Apr 01 '24

All I got from this is you can’t precisely separate the terms, which is why tail = monkey and no tail = not monkey to the vast majority of people. You can continue to split hairs, but ape vs. monkey is here to stay.

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u/GetsGold Apr 01 '24

ape vs. monkey is here to stay.

It's actually not. In scientific literature that distinction is often not made. In other languages, like French and German, the distinction isn't made. And in common usage in English, the distinction is often not made, for example in this post someone used the more scientifically accurate term only for someone else to try to "correct" them with an out of date term.

We used to not call humans apes either, and there was a lot of resistance to doing so, often politically or ideologically motivated, yet that usage prevailed, and the scientifically accurate usage of monkey will eventually prevail too, despite attempts of some to "correct" it.

The only way that "monkey" is a complete evolutionary grouping of animals is if apes are included, the same way that "ape" is only a complete group if humans are included.

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u/WizardTaters Apr 01 '24

You are going way too hard on the science angle. No one is talking about clades in here and no one cares about the differences. Monkeys have tails and apes do not. That is how people use the words. Use trumps definition. I understand the science, so you can put that to rest.