How Many Great Apes Are There?
The great apes are more diverse and more threatened than many of us ever expected. We now recognize at least fourteen kinds of great ape: five taxa of gorillas, four of chimpanzees and the singular bonobo, all found in central and western Africa, plus four kinds of orangutans known from tropical Asia. Altogether the gorillas, bonobo and chimpanzees occur in twenty-one African nations; of the orangutans, one species is wedged into northernmost Sumatra, and the other (divided into three subspecies) survives on the island of Borneo. Along with all other primates, the great apes are included in the IUCN Red List, a comprehensive survey of threats to our worlds biodiversity. The Red List provides conservation assessments for a tremendous array of threatened species and it shows the great apes in near-universal decline. Only the mountain gorillas are precariously stable at best, and even so they are listed as Endangered, along with nine other taxa. The remaining four kinds of great ape are n
