ANTHROPOID APES is the name given to the family Simiidae, because, of all the ape-world, they most closely resem ble man. This family includes the gibbons of S.E. Asia, the orangs of Borneo and Sumatra, the gorillas of W. Equatorial Af rica, and the chimpanzees of W. and Central Equatorial Africa. In general structure they all resemble human beings, as in the ab sence of tails; in the shape of vertebral column, sternum and pel vis ; in the adaptation of the arms for turning the palm upper most at will; in the possession of a long vermiform appendix to the short caecum of the intestine; in the size of the cerebral hem ispheres and the complexity of their convolutions. They differ in the proportion of the limbs, in the bony development of the eye brow ridges, and in the opposable great toe.
Man differs from them in the absence of a hairy coat ; in the development of a large lobule to the external ear; in his fully erect attitude; in his flattened foot with the non-opposable great toe ; in the straight limb-bones ; in the wider pelvis ; in the marked sigmoid flexure of his spine ; in the perfection of the muscular movements of the arm; in the delicacy of hand; in the smallness of the canine teeth and other dental peculiarities ; in the develop ment of a chin; and in the small size of his jaws compared to the relatively great size of the cranium. Together with man and the baboons, the anthropoid apes form the group known to science as Catarrhini, those, that is, possessing a narrow nasal septum, and are thus easily distinguishable from the flat-nosed monkeys or Platyrrhini. The anthropoid apes are arboreal and confined to the Old World. (See PRIMATES.) See Huxley's Man's Place in Nature; Darwin's Descent of Man; Haeckel's Anthropogeny (Leipzig, 1874, 1903 ; Paris, 1877 ; Eng. ed., 1883) ; W. H. Flower and Rich. Lydekker, Mammals Living and Extinct (London, 1891) ; C. F. Sonntag, Morphology and Evolution of the Apes and Man (1924).