Ape years ago (Mya) the clades diverged into newer clades. The lesser apes are the gibbon family, Hylobatidae, of sixteen species; all are native to Asia. Their major differentiating characteristic is their long arms, which they use to brachiate through trees. Their wrists are ball and socket joints as an evolutionary adaptation to their arboreal lifestyle. Generally smaller than the African apes, the largest gibbon, the siamang, weighs up to ; in comparison, the smallest "great ape", the bonobo, is . Formerly, all the great apes except humans were classified as the family Pongidae, which conveniently provided for separating the human
Ape primate, as is still the case for its cognates in other Germanic languages. Later, after the term "monkey" had been introduced into English, "ape" was specialized to refer to a tailless (therefore exceptionally human-like) primate. Thus, the term "ape" obtained two different meanings, as shown in the 1911 "Encyclopædia Britannica" entry: it could be used as a synonym for "monkey" and it could denote the tailless humanlike primate in particular. Some, or recently all, hominoids are also called "apes", but the term is used broadly and has several different senses within both popular and scientific settings. "Ape" has been used