--- title: The great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: The great apes are four kinds of big, tailless, very clever animals: chimpanzees and bonobos, gorillas, and ora --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / The great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos,… # The great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans Lesson 16 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/16-the-great-apes/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/0/) — The great apes are four kinds of big, tailless, very clever animals: chimpanzees and bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans, and every one of them is endangered. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/1/) — A silverback gorilla beating his chest looks terrifying, but he is mostly a gentle vegetarian munching about 18 kilograms of leaves a day, and the chest beat is a show that helps avoid real fights. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/2/) — Apes use tools and know themselves: a chimp fishes termites out of a mound with a grass stem, an orangutan weaves a fresh leafy bed every night, and chimps in a mirror touch a mark on their own face. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/3/) — Orangutans live in Borneo and Sumatra, gorillas, chimps and bonobos in Africa, and their forests are being cut down for farms and oil palm, while apes have babies so slowly that their numbers take a very long time to recover. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/4/) — Chimpanzees push a grass stem or stick into termite holes and lick off the termites that bite it; Jane Goodall saw this in Gombe, Tanzania, in 1960, when people still thought only humans made tools. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/5/) — A silverback is an adult male gorilla whose back turns silver from about 12 years old; he beats his chest with cupped hands, not fists, and the pops can be heard about 1 kilometre away. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/6/) — Gorillas are almost entirely plant eaters, eating leaves, stems, shoots and fruit, and a big male can eat about 18 kilograms of plants a day. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/7/) — Orangutans build a new nest high in the trees every night by bending and weaving branches, sometimes with a pillow or a roof of leaves. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/8/) — Orangutan babies stay with their mothers for about 7 or 8 years, longer than any other animal except humans; orang-utan means person of the forest in Malay. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/9/) — Bonobos look like slim chimpanzees, live only south of the wide Congo River, which apes cannot swim across, while chimps live to the north of it, have groups led by females, and often settle quarrels peacefully and share food. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/10/) — Chimpanzees eat mostly fruit but sometimes hunt monkeys like the colobus as a team, each taking a role, and share the meat with friends. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/11/) — Gorillas and chimps walk on all fours leaning on their knuckles, while orangutans walk on their fists or the sides of their hands. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/12/) — In the mirror test, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans touch a mark put on their face, showing they know the reflection is themselves; most animals, like cats and dogs, act as if it is another animal. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/13/) — Every gorilla has its own pattern of nose wrinkles, like a fingerprint, so scientists can recognise each one from photos without catching it. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/14/) — In 2024 scientists in Sumatra reported that an orangutan called Rakus chewed a medicinal plant and spread the juice on a wound on his face, the first wild animal seen treating a wound this way. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/16-the-great-apes/15/) — All great apes are endangered; orangutans live only on Borneo and Sumatra, where forest is cut down for farms and oil palm, and some products now show if their palm oil was grown without clearing rainforest. - ← previous: [Monkeys: kinds, tails and troops](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/15-monkeys-kinds-tails-and-troops/) - next →: [How close are apes to us?](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/17-how-close-are-apes-to-us/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)