Primates

[Mellie]

Are gorillas and chimpanzees the same, opposite or neither?

[punkmuppet]

Neither, they're similar, part of the ape family of animals, as are we. They're probably about as closely related to us as to each other, although that's just a guess.

[5029]

I don't think its possible to have the "opposite" of an animal

[New Forester]

There are four species of African ape: gorilla (possibly sub-divided), bonobo, human and chimp.  Bonobo and chimp are closer to each other, and probably about equidistant from gorillas and humans.

 

The orangutan branched off earlier, so we are closer to the other African apes than to the orangutan, which is Asian.  Gibbons (also Asian) are apes too, but are well separated from all the larger ones.

 

The other apes look more similar to each other than they do to us because we happen to have some particular specialisations for walking and talking -- otherwise we're much like them.

 

None of the above are monkeys.  However the Barbary (or Gibraltar) "ape" is really a macaque monkey with no tail (it lived wild in Britain at one time).

 

Having said that, apes are descended from Old World monkeys, so we are related more closely to them than to South American monkeys.

[New Forester]

Read something today (New Scientist 9 October 2004 p 33) which counted gorillas as two species, and suggested that orangutans may also divide into two species.

 

The article was about a kind of giant chimpanzee which is claimed to have been found, but it is unclear whether this will turn out to be a subspecies of chimp or what now must be called a sixth species of African ape.  One suggestion for these apes is a gorilla-chimp hybrid, but personally I think this is extremely unlikely as they are surely much too far apart.