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Monkeys hanging out at Saruyama in Kyoto. The monkeys are free to roam the area as you walk outside, but there are monkey rangers to keep them from misbehaving if they are up to no good.
Location: Saruyama, Kyoto, Japan
A monkey is a primate, either an Old World monkey or a New World monkey. There are about 260 known living species of monkey. Many are arboreal, although there are species that live primarily on the ground, such as baboons. Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent. Unlike apes, monkeys usually have tails. Tailless monkeys may be called "apes", incorrectly according to modern usage; thus the tailless Barbary macaque is called the "Barbary ape".
The New World monkeys are classified within the parvorder Platyrrhini, whereas the Old World monkeys (superfamily Cercopithecoidea) form part of the parvorder Catarrhini, which also includes the hominoids (apes and humans). Thus, scientifically speaking, monkeys are a paraphyletic group, meaning that although they are believed to have evolved from a single ancestral species, the group does not contain all the descendants of that ancestor. Old World monkeys are actually more closely related to homonids than they are to New World monkeys.