Macaque
Fast facts
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Genus
- Macaca
Scientific name
- Scientific name
- Macaca
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Mammalia
- Order
- Primates
- Family
- Cercopithecidae
- Genus
- Macaca
How to say it in other languages
- Chinese
- 獼猴
- Dutch
- Makaken
- French
- Macaque
- German
- Makaken
Facts from Wikipedia’s “Macaque” page and Wikispecies (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The macaques are a genus (Macaca) of Old World monkeys of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. The 22 species of macaques live in North Africa, and more widely in Asia. One species is the well-known Barbary macaque. Macaques are of some interest to human researchers for their social structures, and their usefulness in animal testing, particularly regarding eyesight.
Social behavior
Macaques have a very intricate social structure and hierarchy. If a macaque of a lower level in the social chain has eaten berries and none are left for a higher-level macaque, then the one higher in status can, within this social organization, remove the berries from the other monkey’s mouth.
Copyright test case
In 2014 selfies taken by a crested black macaque seemed to establish a legal precedent, after the Wikimedia Foundation rejected a copyright claim.
The photos had been sold widely by David Slater, a professional nature photographer, whose camera was temporarily carried away by a group of macaques. After the photos were uploaded to Wikipedia, the organisation refused to delete them, claiming “This file is in the public domain, because as the work of a non-human animal, it has no human author in whom copyright is vested.
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Macaque” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact.
Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.
Worksheets, answer keys and printable layouts elsewhere on K5Print are our own work and are not covered by this licence.