How many variety's of monkeys and apes are there?

Question

How many variety's of monkeys and apes are there?

Answer 1

A lot, there are Old World, New World monkeys, Monkeys with prehensile tails etc.... Then there are the most interesting.....the Great Apes. If you want to go down to the species level you should grab a primatology book to answer this question.

Answer 2

I'll pick up where dmackey89 left off.  There are 6 types of Ape.  The Gibbons and Siamangs who seperated from each other 8mya and from the human line 18mya, the Orangutans who seperated from our common ancestor 14 mya, the Gorilla who seperated from our common ancestor 7mya (around the same time as the evolution of bipedalism) and Chimpanzees and Bonobos who seperated from each other 3mya and from our common ancestor 5mya.  The thing that interests me the most about this is that Chimpanzees and Bonobos seperated from our lineage after the advent of bipedalism, which suggests that they have an ancestor which walked and then reverted back to a lifestyle of primarily using quadrapedal locomotion via knuckle walking when being terestrial, while also maintaining some arboreal activities as well.  Makes one wonder how benificial walking in itself truly is when there is an example of another lineage that must have disposed of it along the way.  Sorry I got off topic.

The monkeys are too numerous to count and even according to primatological experts the numbers can vary greatly because of differing distinctons between species and sub species.  You will not be able to get a concrete number on that, but there are three major groups.  There are the Lemuriformes and the Tarsiiformes within the Prosimii group which live primarily in Madagascar (Galagidae are more widespread)  Then there is the Platyrrini which consists of all the primates from Asia to Africa completing the Old World Monkeys and the Catarrhini that make up the new World monkeys.

Answer 3

there are hundreds of kinds of monkeys with 2 major divisions (old world vs.new world) there are also many types of prosimians (tarsiers, lemrus etc. - ever see Madagascar or Zoboomafu?)

As for Apes, there are 5 types living today - gibbons (also known as hylobatids), Orangutans, Gorillas, Chimpanzees and Bonobos (also known as Pygmy Chimps).  Some classification schemes even add Humans as an ape (not tail, larger brain, and many other similar categories).