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
The Ape Who Guards the Balance The Ape Who Guards the Balance The Ape Who Guards the Balance is the tenth in a series of historical mystery novels, written by Elizabeth Peters and featuring fictional sleuth and archaeologist Amelia Peabody. The book's title refers to the Egyptian god Thoth, the divine scribe who waits for the heart of the dead to be weighed on a scale and judged so that he may record its fate; Thoth is usually represented as having the head of an ibis, but also appears as a baboon or ape with the balancing scales. Luxor, 1906-1907. The Emerson clan is trying to