Monkey mandrill, almost long and weighing up to . Some are arboreal (living in trees) while others live on the savanna; diets differ among the various species but may contain any of the following: fruit, leaves, seeds, nuts, flowers, eggs and small animals (including insects and spiders). Some characteristics are shared among the groups; most New World monkeys have prehensile tails while Old World monkeys have non-prehensile tails or no visible tail at all. Old World monkeys have trichromatic color vision like that of humans, while New World monkeys may be trichromatic, dichromatic, or—as in the owl monkeys and greater galagos—monochromatic.
Animals in Buddhism not expressly commanded in the Pāli canon, it is evidently viewed as an ideal state from which human beings have fallen; the Aggañña Sutta (DN.27) explains how human beings, originally sustained on various kinds of vegetable matter (compare Gen.1:29-30), as the result of increasing wickedness began to live by hunting, which was originally thought of as a demeaning occupation. In East Asian Buddhism and particularly in Tibet and China, the release of animals, particularly birds or fish, into their natural environment became an important way of demonstrating Buddhist pity. In Tibetan Buddhism it is known as "Tsethar"; whilst in China