Every Great Ape Type Explained in 25 Minutes

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Borne orangutan.

[00:00:02]The Borneian orangutan is the largest tree dwelling animal on Earth. And if you've ever seen one move through a forest canopy, you understand immediately why that title means something. Males can tip the scales at 100 kg, roughly the weight of a professional linebacker. And yet they spend the overwhelming majority of their lives suspended in the trees of Borneo's rainforests, swinging and clambering through branches with a fluid, unhurried confidence that makes the whole thing look effortless.

[00:00:35]There are three recognized subspecies, the northwest Borneian, the northeast Borneian, and the central Borneian. Each occupying different pockets of an island that has been losing forest at an alarming rate for decades. The most visually dramatic thing about the species is the difference between a dominant flanged male and everyone else.

[00:00:54]Flanged males develop enormous cheek pads called flanges that flare out from either side of the face like acoustic dishes, which is fitting because they also possess a throat pouch capable of producing what researchers call the long call, a deep resonant bellow that carries through dense jungle for up to a kilometer. These calls advertise dominance, warn off rivals, and apparently attract females, making the flange something of an all-in-one broadcasting system. What makes the social structure of Borneian orangutans unusual among great apes is how solitary it is. Outside of a mother and her offspring, you rarely see sustained group living. And researchers believe this is a direct adaptation to the low and patchy distribution of food resources across Bornean forest. When fruit is scarce, you don't want to be splitting it with a crowd. Despite that solitude, these animals show remarkable cognitive depth. They've been observed holding leafy branches over their heads during rain. They use sticks to extract insects from crevices and they produce alarm calls that they sometimes amplify by holding a bundle of leaves to their mouth. A behavior that sits right on the edge of what we'd call tool use and proto language. Offspring stay with their mothers for 7 to 8 years. the longest developmental dependency of any nonhuman animal on the planet. Which means a female bornian orangutan may raise only four or five young in her entire lifetime.

[00:02:31]That reproductive rate is devastatingly slow when you're also facing habitat destruction from palm oil agriculture and illegal hunting. The current wild population sits at somewhere under 70,000 individuals and the IUCN lists the species as critically endangered, a classification that feels increasingly urgent with every forest clearing.

[00:02:54]Sumatran orangutan. Separated from their Bornean relatives by the strait of Malaa and by roughly 400,000 years of independent evolution, the Sumatran orangutan was only formally recognized as a distinct species in 1996 when genetic and morphological analysis made the differences impossible to ignore.

[00:03:16]Males tend to be slightly lighter than Borneian males with a narrower face and dramatically longer facial hair that gives them something of a bearded wise elder appearance.

[00:03:27]The population concentrated almost entirely in the northern province of Ache within the losser ecosystem numbers somewhere around 13,000 to 14,000 individuals making this one of the rarest great apes on the planet. What sumatran orangutans lack in population size, they more than make up for in documented cultural sophistication.

[00:03:49]This is arguably the most prolific toolus using non-human primate we've observed in the wild. Researchers, particularly those working in the tradition of Carl Van Shik's decades of fieldwork, have documented Sumatran orangutans using sticks to extract insects from tree cavities, using other tools to pry seeds from hard shelled fruit, and critically passing these behaviors socially between individuals in a way that looks less like individual invention and more like cultural transmission. That distinction matters enormously because it means knowledge accumulates across generations which is a property we tend to think of as distinctly human. The social environment here is also slightly richer than in Borneo with individuals more frequently found at the same productive fruing trees tolerating one another's presence in a way that may itself be the condition that makes cultural learning possible.

[00:04:48]You can't copy a behavior you never witness. Sumatron orangutans are listed as critically endangered with the loyer ecosystem under constant pressure from agricultural expansion and infrastructure development. The genetic divergence between this species and the Bornean orangutan is estimated at around 3.4%.

[00:05:09]A number that sounds small until you realize it's roughly comparable to the divergence between humans and chimpanzees in relative terms, which reframes just how distinct these animals actually are.

[00:05:23]Tapani orangutan. The Tapani orangutan has the distinction of being the most recently described great ape species in the world. formally named in a November 2017 paper published in Current Biology by a team led by Michael Nater and colleagues, making it the first new great ape species described since the bonobo in 1933. It lives exclusively in the Batang Tou ecosystem in South Tapani, North Somatra, an area of roughly 1,000 km of highland forest. and the entire known population numbers fewer than 800 individuals. That is not a typo. Fewer than 800 animals of an entire great ape species exist on Earth, confined to a single fragmented landscape, which makes the Tapani orangutan the most endangered great ape and one of the most endangered large mammals anywhere on the planet.

[00:06:21]What makes the species particularly fascinating from an evolutionary standpoint is its relationship to the other two orangutan species. Despite sharing an island with Somatan orangutans, Tapani orangutans are genetically more closely related to Bornean orangutans, suggesting that the Tapani population represents a lineage that diverged from other orangutans first, estimated at around 3.38 million years ago and that Bornean orangutans likely descended from a population that crossed from Sumatra to Borneo during periods of lower sea levels in the pleaene. Physically, the species is distinct. Frizzier fur with a more cinnamon tone, a flatter and wider face in males, and a notably different mustache-like arrangement of facial hair. Their long calls differ in acoustic structure from those of both other orangutan species, adding a behavioral signature on top of the morphological and genetic ones. The conservation situation is dire and has been made worse by plans for the Batang Tou hydroelect electric dam which would fragment and flood a significant portion of the species already minimal range.

[00:07:31]The scientific community responded with unusual urgency and public opposition when those plans became known and the fate of the project and the species remains a developing situation.

[00:07:43]Western gorilla. The western gorilla holds the title of the largest living primate on Earth. And a fully grown silverback makes that claim in a way you feel physically. Males can reach 140 to 180 kg and stand close to 1.7 m tall with an arms span that can stretch beyond 2.5 m, wider than most doorways.

[00:08:06]The silver saddle of fur that gives silverbacks their name develops gradually as males reach sexual maturity around age 12 or 13 and it functions as a visible status signal across the dim light of equatorial African forest. The species spans a broad range across west central Africa covering countries including Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea. and it contains two subspecies with very different conservation profiles. The western land gorilla is the more numerous of the two with population estimates somewhere in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 individuals. Though that wide range reflects genuine difficulty in conducting surveys through their dense remote forest habitat rather than any confidence in the numbers. Despite being the gorilla most commonly seen in zoos and the one most people picture when they think of a gorilla, western land gorillas are critically endangered in the wild. Hammered by a combination of habitat destruction, bushmeat hunting, and recurring Ebola outbreaks that have killed gorillas in large numbers across parts of their range. The cross river gorilla, the second subspecies, occupies a tiny area along the Nigeria Cameroon border and numbers only around 200 to 300 individuals, placing it among the most endangered primates on Earth.

[00:09:36]Gorillas are primarily ground dwelling and travel by knuckle walking, though females and younger animals climb trees more readily than large adult males.

[00:09:45]Every night, individuals construct fresh sleeping nests from bent branches and leaves, either on the ground or in trees, a behavior they share with other great apes. Their diet is almost entirely plant-based, requiring them to consume enormous quantities of leaves, stems, pith, and fruit daily to fuel bodies of that size. They share approximately 98.3% of their DNA with humans. A figure that sits quietly behind every photograph of a silverback making eye contact with a camera. Eastern gorilla. The eastern gorilla is technically the largest gorilla species by body size, though the difference from the western gorilla is marginal enough that it rarely registers without a direct comparison.

[00:10:34]What does register vividly is the setting in which its most famous subspecies lives. Mountain gorillas inhabit the volcanic Verunga mountains along the borders of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo at altitudes ranging from 2,200 to 4,300 m above sea level, which means they live in cold, misty montaine forest, where temperatures can drop near freezing at night. In response, they've developed thicker, longer, and denser fur than any other gorilla, giving them a distinctly shaggy, dark silhouette against the green hillsides of the Vungas. Mountain gorillas became globally famous largely through the work of Diane FSY whose research beginning in 1967 at the Karasoki Research Center transformed scientific and public understanding of gorilla behavior and whose murder in 1985 became inseparable from the conservation story of the species. The mountain gorilla population has become one of conservation's genuine success stories, having climbed above 1,000 individuals as of the 2018 census. A meaningful recovery driven by intensive anti- poaching efforts, community engagement programs, and wildlife tourism that gives the gorillas direct economic value to surrounding populations. Mountain gorillas are notably the only great ape that cannot be maintained in captivity as no zoo currently holds them and efforts to do so historically resulted in rapid death.

[00:12:08]The second subspecies, Growers gorilla, also called the eastern lowland gorilla, is a different story entirely. Once numbering around 17,000 individuals in the mid 1990s, the Growers gorilla population has collapsed to an estimated 3,800 animals. A decline driven almost entirely by armed conflict in the eastern DRC that has made conservation work extraordinarily dangerous and has fueled both bush meat hunting and artisal mining that destroys habitat.

[00:12:38]Eastern guerilla social life centers on stable family groups led by a dominant silverback who makes movement decisions, mediates internal conflicts, and serves as the primary defender of the group, sometimes against leopards and sometimes against rival silverbacks. Chimpanzee.

[00:12:57]The chimpanzee is probably the most studied non-human animal in history. And given everything researchers have found, it's not hard to understand why. Sharing approximately 98.7% of their DNA with humans, chimpanzees sit at the center of almost every serious scientific conversation about the origins of human behavior, cognition, culture, and violence. They range across equatorial Africa in a broad band stretching from Sagal in the west to Tanzania in the east and are divided into four subspecies. the central western Nigeria Cameroon and eastern chimpanzee with the Nigeria Cameroon subspecies being the rarest at around 6,000 to 9,000 individuals. The total wild population across all subspecies is estimated somewhere between 170,000 and 300,000, a range that reflects the difficulty of surveying forest dwelling animals across multiple politically complex countries.

[00:14:01]Chimpanzees live in large communities of up to 150 individuals organized through a fish fusion system, meaning the full community rarely assembles in one place.

[00:14:12]Instead, smaller subgroups form and dissolve for daily foraging. Then, individuals maintain bonds with the broader community through grooming, vocalizations, and the iconic pant hoot, a rising hooting call that can be heard over a kilometer away and functions as a kind of social signature. Their tool use is the most diverse and sophisticated documented in any non-human species.

[00:14:38]Depending on the population, chimpanzees crack hardshelled nuts using stone hammer and anvil sets, fish for termites using modified grass or stick probes, use leaves as sponges to drink water from hollows, and in at least one documented population in Sagal, fashionointed wooden spears to hunt small primates called bush babies in tree hollows. These behaviors vary by region in a pattern that looks unmistakably like culture with different communities having different tool traditions passed down through observation and practice.

[00:15:13]Jane Goodall's research at GMI beginning in 1960 was the first to document tool use in wild chimpanzees.

[00:15:21]A discovery that prompted Lewis Leaky's famous remark that it required redefining tool, redefining man, or accepting chimpanzees as humans. Less comfortable but equally well doumented is chimpanzeee warfare. Chimpanzees are the only non-human animal recorded engaging in organized coalition-based lethal violence between neighboring groups, including systematic raiding and killing that has been observed across multiple study sites. The causes and evolutionary logic of this behavior remain actively debated, but its existence has fundamentally shaped how researchers think about the deep roots of human conflict. Beyond the field sites, the captive research history with chimpanzees is its own complicated chapter and one worth understanding even briefly. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, a wave of projects attempted to teach chimpanzees elements of human language with researchers including Allan and Beatatrix Gardner working with a chimpanzeee named Wo to teach American sign language and Herbert Terrace working later with a chimpanzee pointedly named Nim Chimpsky, a reference to the linguist Noom Chsky.

[00:16:34]The results were genuinely mixed and remained contested. Wo and others learned to use dozens, sometimes hundreds of signs in contextually appropriate ways. And there are striking anecdotes of novel sign combinations that look creative. But Terrace, after years of working with Nim, concluded that what the chimpanzees were doing was not language in the full human sense, but a sophisticated form of conditioned signaling. And that critique reshaped the field. What survived from that era is a more careful understanding of where chimpanzeee cognition is genuinely extraordinary and where it differs in kind from human cognition.

[00:17:15]Chimpanzees pass mirror self-recognition tests demonstrating a form of self-awareness shared with only a small handful of species. They show working memory abilities that in specific tasks involving the rapid recall of numerical sequences actually exceed average human performance. A finding from Tetssuro Matsusawa's lab at Kyoto University that surprised researchers and forced a reconsideration of which cognitive abilities are uniquely advanced in humans. They demonstrate strategic deception, theory of mind in at least limited forms, and an understanding of causality that allows them to solve novel physical problems. The ethical weight of this research has shifted over time. In 2015, the United States National Institutes of Health announced an end to most invasive biomedical research on chimpanzees, citing both ethical concerns and limited scientific necessity. and the chimpanzees previously used in such research were gradually retired to sanctuaries, including Chimp Haven in Louisiana. That policy shift, decades in the making, represented one of the clearest cases of accumulated scientific understanding, directly altering how a species is treated. It also raised difficult questions that have not been fully resolved, including what we owe to the long-ived individuals still housed in sanctuaries, what obligations researchers carry to former subjects, and how the cognitive findings should translate into policy for chimpanzees still living in entertainment, private ownership, or substandard zoo facilities around the world. The species sits at an uncomfortable intersection. Close enough to humans that studying them has produced enormous scientific value.

[00:19:03]Close enough that the ethics of doing so have become increasingly hard to defend.

[00:19:07]And yet not so close that wild populations receive the protections we extend to ourselves. The chimpanzeee story is in that sense partly a story about chimpanzees and partly a story about what humans have done while figuring out what chimpanzees are. The two threads are no longer easy to separate. Bonobo. The bonobo is sometimes called the forgotten ape, and the label is unfortunately accurate.

[00:19:36]Despite being one of humanity's two closest living relatives, bonobos were the last great ape to be scientifically described. formally classified by Ernst Schwarz in 1929 and reclassified from chimpanzee to their own species in 1933.

[00:19:52]And they remain the least studied great ape in the wild largely because their entire range sits within the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country where political instability has made sustained field research extraordinarily difficult and dangerous. They live exclusively south of the Congo River. And the river itself, one of the deepest and widest in the world, functions as a natural barrier that has kept bonobos and chimpanzees separated and reproductively isolated for an estimated 1.5 to 2 million years. Despite being genetically nearly indistinguishable from chimpanzees, the two species have evolved dramatically different social structures. Bonobo society is female-dominated with high-ranking females forming coalitions that allow them to exert real social control even over larger males, a pattern almost unique among great apes.

[00:20:48]Social tension within and between groups is routinely diffused through affiliative sexual behavior, a pattern so consistent and varied that it has made bonobos both famous and frequently mischaracterized in popular science. The more scientifically significant point is that bonobos appear to use social bonding rather than dominance and aggression as their primary tool for managing group life. And the results are measurable. No confirmed case of lethal intergroup violence has been documented in wild bonobos. A striking contrast to chimpanzees. Though researchers including France Dewal have cautioned that limited observation time in remote areas means absence of evidence shouldn't be read as evidence of absence. Bonobos show some of the most human resemblance social behaviors of any nonhuman animal, including face-to-face mating, prolonged eye contact during social interaction, spontaneous sharing with unfamiliar individuals in experimental settings, and sensitivity to fairness. They are slighter and more grassal than chimpanzees with longer legs relative to body size, a distinctive central parting in their black head fur, and a more upright posture when walking by pedily.

[00:22:09]Wild population estimates range from 10,000 to 50,000 individuals, a range so wide it is itself a statement about how poorly their range has been surveyed.

[00:22:20]They are listed as endangered. And the Lola Ya Bonobo Sanctuary near Kenshasa remains the world's only dedicated bonobo sanctuary, pioneering reintroduction programs that represent some of the only active efforts to restore wild populations.

[00:22:38]Human. The human is a great ape. And if that sentence lands with any friction at all, this video has done its job.

[00:22:46]Taxonomically, unambiguously, and genetically, Homo sapiens belongs to family homminidai alongside every species covered in this video. Sharing approximately 98.7% of DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos, around 98.3% with gorillas, and roughly 96.9% with orangutans. Anatomically modern humans emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago. A date pushed back from the previously accepted 200,000 years by fossil evidence from the Jebel Earhud site in Morocco described in a landmark 2017 paper in nature by Jeanjhac and colleagues. From that origin, the human lineage did something no other great ape managed. It left. Humans dispersed out of Africa, adapted to Arctic tundra, high alitude plateaus, dense tropical forest, an open desert, and eventually established populations on every continent except Antarctica, reaching a global total that crossed 8 billion in November 2022. The traits that enabled this expansion are the same ones that make humans unusual within the family. Fully committed bipeedal locomotion that frees the hands entirely. A brainto- body ratio larger than any other great ape. A vocal anatomy capable of producing the range of sounds required for spoken language.

[00:24:16]And above all, a capacity for cumulative culture, the ability to build knowledge across generations so that each cohort inherits the accumulated innovations of every cohort before it. No other great ape does this at human scale. Though as this video has shown, chimpanzees, orangutans, and others show genuine precursors of the behavior, the uncomfortable bookend to all of that cognitive and technological capability is this. Every single other great ape discussed in this video is either endangered or critically endangered. And human activity is the primary driver of every single one of those declines.

[00:24:58]Habitat destruction for agriculture, including palm oil and cattle ranching, bush meat hunting, disease transmission from humans to immunologically naive ape populations, climate change, altering forest composition and fruing patterns, the great ape with the largest brain, the most sophisticated tools, and the only demonstrated capacity to read an IUCN red list and understand what it means, is also the reason the list exists. Humans are the only great ape not listed as threatened, which is either a triumph of adaptability or the starkkest possible measure of what that adaptability has cost everything else in the family. If you want to see more, click the video on screen