Let’s get this straight once and for all: They’re not monkeys, they’re apes.

I’m going to try to help you understand why that jackhole at the zoo corrected you about a silly word in front of your kids last Tuesday.

Here goes.

I’ve seen it happen many times: A mother and her kids are standing at the glass pointing at the gorillas inside the exhibit (in the "ape house" with labels everywhere) and the mother says, “Look at the silly monkeys!”

On cue, a bystander interjects, “They’re not monkeys, they’re apes,” which irks the mother and she walks away.

In my brief stint so far doing observations at the Lincoln Park Zoo, I have met a ton of people as they file past Jojo's group of gorillas. Most of the interactions are positive, make what I'm doing feel even cooler than it already is, and validate the importance of the research. And I have never once corrected anyone who I (very often) overhear calling the gorillas “monkeys.”

If asked, or if I’m approached and a conversation ensues, then I do correct any number of misconceptions people may have about the gorillas (e.g. that they're monkeys or that the females are ashamed after they have sex... jeepers!), but I never impose myself on anyone visiting the apes, without their permission. This is hard to do for a professional educator, but it’s my M.O. because I think it's polite and it's not my primary concern or role there... collecting behavioral data is.

But you know what? It’s getting harder and harder to stay silent. The insanity of the whole situation is building to a nearly unbearable level. It’s beginning to blow my mind, the incredible number of people who call apes monkeys.

Mind you most of my friends know monkeys from apes, but here’s why it’s so staggering…

What if you were at the park and met a nice lady and her toddler who wanted to pet your dog and the lady told her kid that your dog was a cat?

You might think, at first, that she's not a native English speaker, but she has an American accent. Okay, then you might think that maybe she's hard of seeing, but for this example, she’s got 20/20 vision and even blind people would assume a pet on a leash was first a dog and only rarely a cat. What if you corrected her and instead of blaming it on a "senior moment," she furrowed her brow and found a way to end the interaction? What else could you possibly think about this mistaken woman except that she must be INSANE? No sane person would teach their child that a dog is a cat, would think a dog is a cat, or would never have learned during their whole life that a dog wasn't a cat.

Dogs and cats are distinct. Easy.

So are monkeys and apes. Just as easy. Confusing them, like confusing cats and dogs, is either embarrassingly lazy or is downright flirting with insanity.

Apes are gibbons, siamangs, orangutans, gorillas, chimps, and people. We apes don’t have tails and we have big brains and advanced cognitive skills among other traits. Monkeys have tails (even ones that look tailless have little stubs) and most have much smaller brains (an exception being the capuchin).

Apes and monkeys are separate categories of animals. This is why calling an ape a monkey sounds absolutely crazy and that is why some people just can’t help themselves and morph into prickish pedants around ignorant zoo visitors.

Would you call a horse a zebra? No.

Would you call a goat a sheep? No. Or if you did, the farmer would correct you.

Would you call a frog a toad? No. Well, maybe you’d do that because it's so common, but frog- and toad-ologists hate that.

And, apologies to the frog- and toad-ologists out there, but since monkeys and apes are our closest relatives, there is much more at stake when we mislabel them.

We sound so stupid* when we don't know the names of our own relatives. And these aren't even species level names... they're big broad categories of animals that small children are capable of learning.

And no! Knowledge of the animal kingdom is not child's play. It's everyone's Earth. Look around.

Granted, "monkey" is a lot more fun to say than "ape." You don't hear people going gaga over their kittens with, "You look like a little ape!"** So being so much more ubiquitous in our daily vernacular, I do understand how the word "monkey" may be more prominently tattooed on our neurons and might rest further down the tongue than the word "ape."

It's also clear that many zoo visitors are new parents who haven't yet relearned all the things they learned long ago but have since forgotten. They just need a little more time. (This is some of the joy of parenting that I look forward to one day. Differential calculus here I come, again! I've missed you.)

But, it really doesn't matter why so many humans can't bother to distinguish monkeys from apes. What matters is that for your own reputation, for your own dignity, you call apes apes and monkeys monkeys.

The gorillas don't care what you call them from behind the glass, but many of your fellow humans do, and you probably care what your fellow humans think because that's prosocial behavior.

So here's a big sorry on behalf of jerks everywhere who can't help themselves but tell you, "they're not monkeys, they're apes."

And also, on behalf of people everywhere who know that apes aren't monkeys, thank you so much for getting it straight!

*Jeepers. For me to write a word that I abhor, must mean that I mean business.

** Check out my favorite response video ever.

Images modified from: channel.nationalgeographic.com and www.ocf.berkeley.edu