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When we made videos about the canine and feline family trees and released these accompanying beautiful posters, one follow-up request rose to the top. Apes. Hi, I'm David and this is Planet of the Apes. Apes split off from monkeys around 25 to 30 million years ago. The simplest way to tell the difference between apes and monkeys is that apes are generally bigger and don't have tails. But there are a few exceptions. This is an ape, and so is this. And so are all of these beautiful primates. And hey, we are all apes, too. And in this video, I'm going to take you on a tour of all of your cousins and show off the poster we made to celebrate them. Okay,
let's start off with a few of our favorite extinct apes. The largest ape to ever exist was Gigantoythecus, a 10-ft tall half-tonon behemoth who lived in the forests of southern China until around 300,000 years ago. You're going to hear about a lot of pythecuses in this video, by the way, since it's a root term that basically means primate. Despite its well giganticness, Gigantoythecus was likely a pretty chill vegetarian that spent most of its time gnawing on bamboo. One of the strangest extinct apes to ever exist was Oreopythecus, who developed some really weird adaptations while living on a predator-free island in the Mediterranean 6 to 8 million years ago.
First off, it had flat feet and short, robust legs, probably because it spent a lot of the time out in the open walking around on two feet, about 4 million years before any other ape did. Second, it had incredibly long arms, which helped it reach into mucky bogs and grab its favorite food, swamp grass. Let's go back a little farther in time, 25 million years ago, to meet Rukquapythecus. It was tiny, barely 5 kilos, and it lived in the woodlands of what is now Tanzania. But the researchers who found its fossils realized that it was a long missing link between monkeys and people. In other words, it was one of the very first apes. So, let's go through Rukquipythecus' living relatives, the current ape family tree. There are two
branches, the great apes, which are bigger, and the lesser apes, which are smaller. You'll notice there are way more lesser ape species than great ape species. That's because for reasons scientists don't really understand yet. The lesser apes are super prone to chromosome rearrangements, which means that when a population splinters from the main group, it often evolves a new number of chromosomes, making it unable to interbreed with the species it came from. Okay, let's start with the lesser apes. The l gibbon, which lives mostly in Thailand, is the gibbon you are probably most familiar with, as it's the most common one in zoos, and it's a kuner. Every morning, mating pairs sing
duets to one another across the forest. Recently, researchers learned that these songs don't just serve as a love language. They also include info about predators in the area. The agile gibbon and the borne white-bearded gibbon are some of the best athletes in the ape family. When these gibbons swing through the trees, they can reach speeds of up to 55 km/h as they move between the branches, and they can leap more than 15 m. That's the length of a semi-trail. There are lots of other similar looking gibbons on this branch, like the three different types of gray gibbons that live in Borneo, and Claus's gibbons that live on the Mento Islands off the west coast of Sumatra and the silvery gibbons
that live on the island of Java. In some gibbon species, the males and the females look totally different. Take the piated gibbons of Thailand and Cambodia. Male piated gibbons are black with a ring around their face, while females are tan with a black face and chest. In most species of hoolock gibbons, which live farther north in India and China, the males are black with white eyebrows, while the females are light brown with a darker face. One species, the Skywalker hoolock gibbon, was only discovered by scientists 10 years ago, making it the most recent addition to the entire tree. And yes, those researchers were massive
Star Wars nerds. Now, let's check out this bow of the gibbon branch of the tree, the crested gibbons, which are called that because it looks like they've got these little mohawks on top of their heads. The three crested gibbons species, the black crested gibbon, the eastern black crested gibbon, and the hain black crested gibbon, all live in northern Vietnam or China. While all other gibbons live in pairs, the crested gibbons are a little laxer about this whole monogamy thing and sometimes live in one male multi-female groups. The Heinen black crested gibbon is likely the most endangered primate in the world. Thanks to deforestation, there are fewer than 50 of them left in the wild. Then there are the cheicked gibbons, known for the
cool facial roughs that both the males and the females sport. The northern buffed cheek gibbon, the southern white cheicked gibbon, the northern white cheicked gibbon, and the yellow cheicked gibbon all stay high up in the canopy of the forests of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, likely to keep away from the clouded leopards and pythons that patrol the lower branches. Finally, there's the last bow of the lesser eight branch, which contains only one member, the Siang. The Siameang, which lives in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, is by far the biggest of the lesser apes. At up to 15 kilos, it's twice the size of the others. In addition, it has an inflatable throat sack that it uses to
magnify its songs across the forests. That's all the lesser apes, given or take a few. All right, now let's head on over to the other side of the tree, the great apes. The great ape that we're least related to is the orangutane, which gets its name from the Malay words for forest and person. The Borneian orangutane was made famous by Barut Galdigos who has been studying these solitary animals for more than 50 years. Male Borneian oranges, at least the bigger dominant ones, develop distinctive wide facial plates and regularly come down to the ground to eat fallen fruit, while the less dominant males and the females stay protected up in the trees. The Sumatran orangutane is
less likely to come to the ground to eat, probably because there are lots of hungry tigers around. The Tapanoli orangutane also lives in Sumatra, but just in one tiny isolated corner. It's a little bit paler than the sumashian one. It's also the rarest great ape. There are likely less than a thousand of them. Okay, let's get into the gorillas. Most western gorillas live in the lowland rainforests of the Republic of Congo and live in groups of several females and one dominant male who's called a silverback. These gorillas weigh up to 100 kilos, and they're pretty clever. They've been seen using sticks to measure the depths of streams before they try to cross them. Eastern gorillas live in Rwanda, Uganda, and the
Democratic Republic of Congo. The most famous eastern gorillas are the mountain gorillas. Made famous by primatologist Diane FSY. They are huge. Silverback males can weigh more than $200 kg, but are known as peaceful giants who tolerate the presence of humans. In fact, mountain gorilla tourism is a giant business. It generates more than $60 million a year. Ooh. Now we're getting somewhere. We've arrived at our closest living relatives, the bonobos and chimpanzees, who diverged from us humans just 5 or so million years ago. Bonobos and chimps split off from one another just over a million years ago thanks to the widening Congo River which split the two groups apart. We made a
whole video about that. Because the bonobos didn't have to compete with gorillas for food, they ended up peaceful and relatively bohemian, settling most of their disputes with um snuggles. The most famous bonobo was Kanzi, who wowed researchers by quickly learning to use a modified form of language to communicate complex ideas. He was also an avid gamer. He especially liked playing Minecraft. Unlike the hippie bonobos, chimpanzees have no qualms about resorting to violence. The group I used to study in Uganda would regularly go out on patrols looking for males from other groups to beat up or even kill. Chimps also have intricate cultural traditions that they would pass down from one generation to another.
Primatologist Jane Goodall found that chimp moms would teach their children how to fashion twigs in just the right way to successfully fish for termites. Before we get to the last remaining living ape, you know, humans, let's talk about what happened way back when after the human and chimp lineages split. One of the first homminids to walk upright was Oralopythecus Apparensis. Hey, there's that Pythecus route again. The most well-known Oralopiththesine is Lucy, who was named after the Beatles song that the scientists played on repeat while she was excavated from a valley in Ethiopia. Lucy and her relatives were pretty small, around 4t tall, and mostly ate fruit, seeds, and
roots. About 2 and a half million years ago, Homohabilis evolved in eastern and southern Africa. They were bigger than the oralopithesines and were the first hominids to make basic stone tools. There's evidence that Homohabilis was a scavenger. It would scare off hyenas and lions from kills and then use those stone tools to hack off meat and bones to munch on. Then about 2 million years ago, not too long before Homohabilis went extinct, Homo Erectus evolved. Erectus basically looked like a modern human with long legs capable of walking extremely long distances. It was the first homminid to make its way out of Africa and into Asia and Europe. Erectus
was also the first homminid to learn how to make fire and to take down big animals by themselves. Modern Homo sapiens likely evolved from a branch of the Homoctus tree. But our species wasn't the only human species to split off. In fact, around a couple hundred thousand years ago, Homo sapiens shared the Earth with several other human species, not to mention the bands of Homoctus that were still around. Let's meet our neighbors. The other human species you're probably most familiar with is the Neanderthalss. You've probably heard about how big and strong they were, and they needed to be in order to survive the cold in Northern Europe and to hunt down the woolly mammoths that made up most of their
diet. They also painted the caves where they live. At the same time, the Dennisovvens ranged across Asia and a little bit of Europe. They were as big as the Neanderthalss, but looked a little different, likely because they evolved adaptations to help them live high up in the mountains. They also liked making jewelry and bracelets. There's evidence that the Dennisovvens and the Neanderthalss occasionally overlapped. In fact, at one cave in Siberia, researchers found a human with DNA that showed she had a Dennisovven father and a Neanderthal mother. Homohidlebergensis lived in southern Europe around the same time. They were likely taller than the other groups of humans living around and also relied on hunting big game for food.
Hidlebergensis specialized in taking down the straight tusked elephants that lived in that area. At around the same time, there was also a species of tiny humans, Homo Floresensus, that lived on an isolated island in Indonesia. Despite being only 3 and 1/2 ft tall, these islanders were able to successfully hunt the local elephants, which were also pretty small due to the phenomenon of island dwarfism. Homo floresiansis thrived by themselves for 100,000 years. And less than a decade ago, researchers in the Philippines found yet another human species, Homolonensis, that also likely lived around the same time. Like Homo Floresensis, Luzonensis was tiny. But unlike any other human species,
there's evidence that Luzonensis became more aroreal again. Their curved handbones indicate they spent a bunch of time in the trees, perhaps gathering fruit and raiding bird nests. And finally, at the very same time that those six other species existed all around Africa, there were small bands of homo sapiens, which look pretty much exactly like modern humans. Over the next couple hundred thousand years, as our species spread all over the world, we became more capable of complex language and thought, our social networks grew, allowing us to pass new skills and tradition down across generations. And as the rest of the human species either died off or interbred with us, homo sapiens became the last humans in existence and the only ape that's capable of making a
video and a beautiful poster about apes. Okay, so about that ape poster. It was painstakingly drawn in amazing detail by our wonderful illustrator Homo sapiens here at Minute Earth, and it would look fantastic on the wall of your house or your classroom. To get one, click on the link in the description. And if you buy it in a bundle with our dog and cat taxonomy posters, you'll get 20% off. Thank you, and thanks for supporting Minute Earth.
