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 least three common, or traditional, uses of the term "ape": non-specialists may not distinguish between "monkeys" and "apes", that is, they may use the two terms interchangeably; or they may use "ape" for any tailless monkey or non-human hominoid; or they may use the term "ape" to just mean the non-human hominoids. Modern biologists and primatologists use monophyletic groups for taxonomic classification; that is, they use only those groups that include all descendants of a common ancestor. The superfamily Hominoidea is such a group—also known as a clade. Some scientists now use the term "ape" to mean all members of