Ten things you never knew about... monkeys

Today is Monkey Day, an annual celebration held on December 14 since 2000 when artists Carey Sorrow and Eric Millikin at Michigan State University decided that a Monkey Day was what the world needed.

1. Monkey Day celebrates monkeys and “all things simian” including apes, tarsiers and lemurs.

2. The Burmese sneezing monkey, discovered in 2010, clears its nose by sneezing when it rains.

3. On the Japanese island of Yakushima, monkeys have been seen riding deer..

4. Last year the National Portrait Gallery marked Monkey Day by tweeting a painting of the Earl of Rochester putting a laurel on a jabbering monkey.

5. The Emperor tamarin is said to have been named for German Emperor Wilhelm II as both had impressive white moustaches.

6. New world monkeys have 36 teeth; Old World monkeys have 32 teeth.

7. Female monkeys in Thailand have been seen teaching their young how to floss their teeth.

8. A group of monkeys is called a troop, barrel, carload, cartload or tribe.

9. Monkeys usually have tails; apes don’t. Another difference is that apes swing with their arms from branch to branch; monkeys run along branches.

10. Neither of the words ‘monkey’ or ‘ape’ appear in the King James Bible.