--- title: The ape house: orangutans, gibbons, bonobos and how apes think — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The ape house: orangutans, gibbons, bonobos and how apes think», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: An orangutan moves slowly across the ropes on arms longer than its legs, an arm span of over 2 metres, whil --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/) [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 ape house: orangutans, gibbons, bo… # The ape house: orangutans, gibbons, bonobos and how apes think Lesson 85 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 13 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/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/0/) — An orangutan moves slowly across the ropes on arms longer than its legs, an arm span of over 2 metres, while a gibbon flies arm over arm so fast it looks like a swinging pendulum. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/1/) — Apes are clever in ways you can watch: an orangutan puts a sack on its head when it rains, apes tap puzzles on touch screens, and an orangutan that sees a mark on its face in a mirror reaches up to pick at it, so it knows the reflection is itself. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/3/) — Apes still cannot talk like us, because their throats and mouths are built differently, and King Louie singing in The Jungle Book is doubly made up: real orangutans live only on Borneo and Sumatra, not in India. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/4/) — Orangutans spend almost all their lives in trees; their arms are far longer than their legs and their arm span can be over 2 metres. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/6/) — Wild orangutans hold big leaves over their heads like umbrellas, and zoo orangutans use sacks and blankets the same way. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/7/) — Wild orangutans live only on Borneo and Sumatra and are critically endangered, largely because forests were cut down for palm oil farms. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/8/) — Gibbons are small apes that sing loud duets, male and female together, heard about a kilometre away. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/9/) — Swinging arm over arm is called brachiation; gibbons are the fastest apes in the trees, reported at around 50 kilometres per hour. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/11/) — Great apes do not swim naturally and can drown, so zoos use water moats around ape islands. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/12/) — Some zoos let apes play memory games on touch screens, and in a famous test young chimps remembered flashing numbers faster than university students. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/13/) — Apes cannot speak words; some, like the gorilla Koko and the bonobo Kanzi, learned hundreds of signs or symbols, but scientists argue about how much this is like language. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/14/) — In the mirror test, great apes, dolphins, elephants and magpies have noticed a mark on their own body, dogs and cats usually ignore it, and human babies usually pass at about 18 months. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/85-ape-house-orangutans-gibbons-bonobos/15/) — Like all apes, orangutans, gibbons and bonobos have no tails. - ← previous: [The ape house: gorillas and chimpanzees](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/84-ape-house-gorillas-and-chimpanzees/) - next →: [The monkey house and the lemurs of Madagascar](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/86-monkey-house-and-lemurs-of-madagascar/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)