- Joined
- Oct 24, 2011
- Messages
- 23,124
- Reaction score
- 10,886
- Location
- Where faults collide
- Website
- doggedlywriting.blogspot.com
"Ape" is a somewhat defunct designation these days, unless you include humans, because of cladistics and the modern convention that taxonomic groupings be monophyletic. There's no grouping that includes chimps, gorillas, orangutans, gibbons and their most recent common ancestor (the primates generally referred to as "apes") that doesn't also include the hominins (humans and their extinct relatives and ancestors).
Like the word "reptile," which only represents a clade if birds are included and the ancestors of mammals are excluded, it's retained as a more colloquial way of designating a group of animals with superficial similarities but aren't actually complete branch of the taxonomic tree.
In any case, the bird is right and the word "ape" never referred to a single species of primate.
Now what were we talking about again
Like the word "reptile," which only represents a clade if birds are included and the ancestors of mammals are excluded, it's retained as a more colloquial way of designating a group of animals with superficial similarities but aren't actually complete branch of the taxonomic tree.
In any case, the bird is right and the word "ape" never referred to a single species of primate.
Now what were we talking about again
Last edited:
