Macaque stump-tailed macaque within the "M. sinica" group. Prehistoric (fossil) species: Macaque The macaques ( or ) constitute a genus (Macaca) of Old World monkeys of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. The 23 species of macaques are distributed throughout Asia, North Africa and (in one instance) Gibraltar. Macaques are principally frugivorous, although their diet also includes seeds, leaves, flowers, and tree bark, and some, such as the crab-eating macaque, subsist on a diet of invertebrates and occasionally small vertebrates. Macaques are found in a variety of habitats throughout the Asian continent, and are extremely adaptable. All macaque social groups are arranged around dominant,
Rhesus macaque Jean-Baptiste Audebert, who applied the name to the species, stated: "it has no meaning". According to Zimmermann’s first description of 1780, the rhesus macaque is distributed in eastern Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, as far east as the Brahmaputra Valley in peninsular India, Nepal, and northern Pakistan. Today, this is known as the Indian rhesus macaque "M. m. mulatta", which includes the morphologically similar "M. rhesus villosus", described by True in 1894, from Kashmir, and "M. m. mcmahoni", described by Pocock in 1932 from Kootai, Pakistan. Several Chinese subspecies of rhesus macaques were described between 1867 and 1917. The molecular differences identified