family Pongidae

For much of the twentieth century, the family Hominidae included only humans and australopithecines, while the other apes were sequestered in the now-obsolete family Pongidae. In recent years, as Hominidae has been expanded to include chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, new layers of discrimination -subfamily Homininae and tribe Hominini--have also been introduced.

Anthropologists may refer to the family Pongidae as the "great apes," but many biologists consider Hominidae to include Pongidae as the subfamily Pongidae or restrict the latter to the orangutans.

With pygmy chimpanzees, these nonhuman species make up the family pongidae. The line, therefore, is neatly drawn at the family level, leaving out gibbons, macaques, baboons, mandrills, colobus, and numerous species of monkeys.