Rhesus macaque Rhesus macaque The rhesus macaque ("Macaca mulatta") is one of the best-known species of Old World monkeys. It is listed as Least Concern in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in view of its wide distribution, presumed large population, and its tolerance of a broad range of habitats. Native to South, Central, and Southeast Asia, rhesus macaque have the widest geographic ranges of any nonhuman primate, occupying a great diversity of altitudes and a great variety of habitats, from grasslands to arid and forested areas, but also close to human settlements. The rhesus macaque is brown or grey in
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