lesser ape

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Related to lesser ape: great ape, Prosimians

lesser ape

Any of various apes of the family Hylobatidae, consisting of the gibbons.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun

lesser ape - gibbons and siamangs

anthropoid ape - any tailless ape of the families Pongidae and Hylobatidae

family Hylobatidae, Hylobatidae - used in some classifications for the lesser apes (gibbons and siamangs); sometimes considered a subfamily of Pongidae

Hylobates lar, gibbon - smallest and most perfectly anthropoid arboreal ape having long arms and no tail; of southern Asia and East Indies

Hylobates syndactylus, siamang, Symphalangus syndactylus - large black gibbon of Sumatra having the 2nd and 3rd toes partially united by a web

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Though his progress seemed tantalizingly slow to the ape-man whose idea of speed had been gained by such standards as the lesser apes attain, he made, as a matter of fact, almost as rapid progress as the drifting canoe that bore Rokoff on ahead of him, so that he came to the bay and within sight of the ocean just after darkness had fallen upon the same day that Jane Clayton and the Russian ended their flights from the interior.

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To Numa, the lion, to Tantor, the elephant, to the great apes and the lesser apes, to each and all of the myriad creatures of this savage wild, the ways of man were new.