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Are you a Monkey?

DC

Banned
DC
Joined
Mar 20, 2008
Messages
23,064
Are we Monkeys? i would say yes. We are Monkeys.

here AronRa making the case for us being monkeys.

 
Define "monkey".

BTW, when I saw the post I misread author's handle as "DOC".

So the post turned out to be very different from what I expected.
 
If we're monkeys on monophyletic grounds, then we're also lemurs (or whatever we might call the ancestral primates), and we're probably also insectivores, and mammals, and therapsids, and aw heck, let's just call ourselves vertebrates, chordates, animals, life . . .
 
The Shrike said:
If we're monkeys on monophyletic grounds, then we're also lemurs (or whatever we might call the ancestral primates), and we're probably also insectivores, and mammals, and therapsids, and aw heck, let's just call ourselves vertebrates, chordates, animals, life . . .
Click to expand...
"We are life..."

Sounds too deep, man. I think I'll just stick with being a monkey.
 
Hist comments on Linnean classification are painful to listen to, as he appears to have no idea what the difference between the Linnean system and the Systema Naturae is.
 
"My uncle is a monkey's uncle, what does that make of me? Halfway between a human being, and a chimpanzee..."
(from a song I wrote..)
 
Then the branch broke and we landed on our collective rump on the savannah and found our poo throwing skills worked even better with rocks.

Not much has changed since, except the rocks got bigger.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
As you can see from the Tree of Life Web Project, the current consensus is we split from the monkey ancestor one significantly large branch back.

Primates

Then gibbons branched off.

And then the Hominidae branch diverged.
Click to expand...

its strange, when i look how they are classified in german, and then take that word " Affe " and translate it, it says Monkey and not Ape.

wjem i look at German classifications, we are Affen, Monkeys

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primaten#Innere_Systematik

not so in english.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate#Classification_of_living_primates

and also parts of the USA they teach the new classifications already, the classification that says we are monkeys.
 
I'm actually a thousand monkeys on a thousand keyboards, typing randomly to produce forum posts.
 
Mark6 said:
Define "monkey".

BTW, when I saw the post I misread author's handle as "DOC".

So the post turned out to be very different from what I expected.
Click to expand...

Did the great apes evolve from smaller monkeys as opposed to the other way around? I don't know offhand, but I think so. As they (and we) have (or had) hands for feet, clearly at a minimum we had a common ancestor hanging out in trees for the better part of their lives.

Call it a monkey.
 
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Dragonrock said:
By his logic not only am I a monkey, I'm also a bacterium.
Click to expand...

No, not so. We fall into the Eukaryote Domain. Bacteria constitute their own Domain.

When you say "monkey" it could mean Old World monkeys or New World monkeys. We apes are more closely related to Old World monkeys than they are to New World monkeys.
 
Mark6 said:
Define "monkey".

BTW, when I saw the post I misread author's handle as "DOC".

So the post turned out to be very different from what I expected.
Click to expand...

LOL..As did I. I was thinking "Oh boy, here comes some more bilical passages" Followed by more nonsense.
 
drzeus99 said:
LOL..As did I. I was thinking "Oh boy, here comes some more bilical passages" Followed by more nonsense.
Click to expand...

;) sorry to dissapoint. no bible passages, but maybe nonsense. but not yet convinced.
 
Jorghnassen said:
I'm actually a thousand monkeys on a thousand keyboards, typing randomly to produce forum posts.
Click to expand...

Assuming a typing rate of 1 key per second per monkey, it would take you on the order of 6x10136 years to type this post. So obviously you must be typing much faster than 1 key per second. Much, much, much faster than that.

You are obviously on some very powerful amphetamines.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
As you can see from the Tree of Life Web Project, the current consensus is we split from the monkey ancestor one significantly large branch back.

Primates
Click to expand...
That has apes on the same line with some monkeys, after separating from another line that has other monkeys on it. In other words, first the two groups of monkeys split from each other, and then one of them split again, with apes coming from that second split. So, with a group being an ancestor and all of its descendants, there's no single group that includes all monkeys but not apes; monkeys have to either include apes in order to be a single group, or be a combination of two separate groups in order to exclude apes.

Of course, that's if you accept the premise that a group has to be an ancestor and all of its descendants (a clade). And that's true for groups identified by scientific terms such as "catarrhine", but it doesn't need to be so for common words. I've argued this case before when I've encountered people who insisted on trying to use cladistics where it doesn't make sense, such as for the word "reptile", which has to either exclude crocodiles or include birds if it's to be a clade. Either would be patently silly, pretending the word means something it just doesn't mean. However, even strictly treating "monkey" as a common word and not a scientific term, I still have to observe that it does include apes, so it is indeed a clade, even if only by coincidence. Why do I say that? Because that's how it's actually used, and in common language, words mean what they're used to mean. People routinely call apes (either in general or in more specific cases where a chimp, gorilla, or such is the subject) monkeys. And they are understood perfectly well by their listeners. So the word "monkey" obviously is used to include them, so apes are, in fact, monkeys, just like terriers are dogs and cobras are snakes and ostriches are birds.

excaza said:
We don't have tails, so no, we aren't monkeys.
Click to expand...
There are monkey species without tails.
 
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DC said:
its strange, when i look how they are classified in german, and then take that word " Affe " and translate it, it says Monkey and not Ape.

wjem i look at German classifications, we are Affen, Monkeys

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primaten#Innere_Systematik

not so in english.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate#Classification_of_living_primates

and also parts of the USA they teach the new classifications already, the classification that says we are monkeys.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure what in that Wiki link you are pointing out but the TOL Web Project is a lot more reliable because of scientific peer review than the Wiki entry. I like Wiki for searching for links but I try to go to the links directly when I can.

As for translations into German, I can't comment other than to say is the terminology is likely the discretion of a translator, not a biologist. If it is a language issue then in German there should still be a category for great apes and one for monkeys regardless of the vocabulary used.
 
I used to think so until I met some monkey that didn't look like me and became suspicious of the whole Darwin evolution thing. So I read Voyage of the beagle and I confirmed that no, Darwin makes no mention of monkeys in his book.
 
MNBrant said:
I used to think so until I met some monkey that didn't look like me and became suspicious of the whole Darwin evolution thing. So I read Voyage of the beagle and I confirmed that no, Darwin makes no mention of monkeys in his book.
Click to expand...

Try reading something more up to date if you're interested in human evolution.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I'm not sure what in that Wiki link you are pointing out but the TOL Web Project is a lot more reliable because of scientific peer review than the Wiki entry. I like Wiki for searching for links but I try to go to the links directly when I can.

As for translations into German, I can't comment other than to say is the terminology is likely the discretion of a translator, not a biologist. If it is a language issue then in German there should still be a category for great apes and one for monkeys regardless of the vocabulary used.
Click to expand...

i am waiting for a mail with links that show new taxonomy does indeed show that we are also monkeys.
 
I'm sure it's already been said, but I'm pretty sure I'm a ape, not a monkey. Been a long time since primates in college. I always preferred studying the herps; almost went into herpetology at one point.

Oh, and;

 
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