Macaques | Types of Macaques | Facts and Diets

Macaques are old-world monkeys hailing from the Asian continent, with a few from Africa. The word ‘Macaque’ originated from French and Portuguese^[1] in the 17th century meaning “monkey“.

Currently, 23 species of living macaques are classified under the genus Macaca in the family Cercopithecinae, and 6 extinct macaques.

Macaques Guide:

Facts about Macaques
What Do Macaques Eat?
Types of Macaques
Extinct Macaques
Macaques By Taxonomists

Facts about Macaques

Macaques live as a group (20 to 50) constructed with dominant female leaders – this phenomenon is called matriarchy. However, the troop is governed by alpha males.

Macaque tails are in varied sizes: pig-tailed, long and moderate, or some species completely lack tails which are often confused with apes. However, there is no greater connection with true apes than in the Old-world monkey group.
These highly intelligent primates exhibit moderate sexual dimorphism based on body dimension (males weigh up to 40 lbs, whereas females weigh up to 29 lbs). The fur coat is mostly the same for both sexes within each species.
Macaques have a variety of habitats, including forests, mountains, rainforests, and scrub forests. However, macaques prefer to live in human environments for easy access to food. Due to this close association with humans, macaques pose a threat of damaging crops and carry transmittable diseases such as Yellow fever, polio, and prion^[2].
In 1998, research suggested that nearly all macaques carry the Herpes B virus^[3], which is entirely harmless to themselves but deadly for humans and pets.
Toque macaques are the smallest macaque species endemic to Sri Lanka, with long tails in relation to body size.
Tibetan macaques are the largest macaque species.

What Do Macaques Eat?

In the wild, most macaques are omnivores except a few herbivores such as Arunachal Macaque, Booted Macaque, Moor Macaque, Pagai Island Macaque, Tonkean Macaque, and White-cheeked Macaque. Macaques have cheek pouches to carry additional food when needed.

All macaque species prefer to eat fruits as their primary diet. The macaque diet consists of flowers, leaves, juicy roots, tree bark, and seeds. Occasionally, small insects and small vertebrates are included in their appetite depending upon macaque species.

Types of Macaques

Arunachal Macaque

Species Name: Macaca munzala

The Arunachal macaque is a comparatively sizeable brown primate with a relatively short tail. Arunachal macaques were first classified into Cercopithecidae’s taxonomy in 2005 by primatologists Madhusudan and Mishra.

Assam Macaque

Species Name: Macaca assamensis

The Assam macaque, also known as Assamese macaque, is a macaque of the Old-World monkey family endemic to South and Southeast Asia. Assam is another state in India. Eating everything from fruits to 55 types of flowers, leaves, seeds, and bark, these macaque monkeys adapt their diet to suit their habitat.

Barbary Macaque

Species Name: Macaca sylvanus

The Barbary macaque, also called the Magot macaque, is a macaque endemic to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and Algeria and a small introduced population in Gibraltar. Before the Ice Age, they inhabited the Mediterranean coasts and most of Europe, as far away as the British Isles and Germany.

Bonnet Macaque

Species Name: Macaca radiata

The Bonnet Macaque, also called Zati, is a species of macaque native to southern India. Bonnet macaques get their common name from a unique feature: a hood-like tuft of hair that extends from the top of their head, much like a tuft of dry grass. Their marble-round eyes look out into the world with a very expressive forehead.

Booted Macaque

Species Name: Macaca ochreata

The booted macaque is a macaque native to Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island. This Old-World monkey is diurnal, spending most of the day in trees. A booted macaque monkey’s body mass is determined by its sex, with males significantly larger than females.

Crab-Eating Macaque

Species Name: Macaca fascicularis

The crab-eating macaque also called the long-tailed macaque and known in laboratories as the cynomolgus monkey, is a primate monkey endemic to Southeast Asia. Crab-eating macaque macaques live in multi-male groups comprising around 30 members.

Crested Black Macaque

Species Name: Macaca nigra

The Crested Black Macaque, also called the Sulawesi Crested Macaque or Celebes Crested Macaque is an Old World monkey native to the Tangkoko Game Reserve in the extreme northeast of the Indonesian island of Celebes (Sulawesi) and neighboring islets.

Formosan Rock Macaque

Species Name: Macaca cyclopis

The Formosan rock macaque also called the Taiwanese macaque, or Formosan rock monkey, is a macaque native to the island of Taiwan. Aside from humans, Formosan rock macaques are the only native primates living in Taiwan.

Gorontalo Macaque

Species Name: Macaca nigrescens

The Gorontalo macaque (Macaca nigrescens), also called the Dumoga-bone macaque, is a species of the primate of the Cercopithecidae family. It is native to the Sulawesi Island of Indonesia.

Gray-Cheeked Mangabey

Species Name: Lophocebus albigena

The gray-cheeked mangabey is a long-tailed crested monkey of the Congo Basin canopy. It holds five countries west of the Ubangi River. Males wear a pale shoulder mantle and call with a whoop-gobble that carries over a kilometer. Older sources list it in Nigeria and Uganda, but current taxonomy places those populations in separate species.

Heck’s Macaque

Species Name: Macaca hecki

The Heck’s Macaque (Macaca hecki) is a macaque native to Sulawesi, Indonesia. This Old-World monkey is diurnal. Due to their frugivorous diet, Heck’s macaques will likely act as seed dispersers throughout their habitat.

Japanese Macaque

Species Name: Macaca fuscata

The Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), also called the snow monkey, is a terrestrial Old World species of monkeys endemic to Japan. Japanese macaques from southern regions generally weigh less than those in northern regions of higher altitudes, where there is more snow during the winter months.

Lion-Tailed Macaque

Species Name: Macaca silenus

The lion-tailed macaque (Macaca silenus), also known as the wanderoo, is an Old World monkey native to the Western Ghats of South India. Lion-tailed macaques are diurnal and arboreal.

Moor Macaque

Species Name: Macaca maura

The moor macaque (Macaca maura) is a brown/black haired macaque with a pale rump and bare pink rump skin. Moor macaques appear to be a relatively tolerant macaque species, showing low levels of aggression between group members.

Muna-Buton Macaque

Species Name: Macaca brunnescens

The Muna-Buton macaque is a brown-black, nearly tailless monkey found only on Buton and Muna islands in Southeast Sulawesi. It eats mostly fruit, raids sweet potato gardens, and is rated Vulnerable as logging and mining shrink its forest. Taxonomists still argue over whether it is a full species or a form of the booted macaque.

Northern Pig-tailed Macaque

Species Name: Macaca leonina

The northern pig-tailed macaque (Macaca leonina) is a macaque species in the Cercopithecidae family. Typical of this group of Old World monkeys, northern pig-tailed monkeys are gregarious, living in social groups of 9-81 individuals.

Pagai Island Macaque

Species Name: Macaca pagensis

The Pagai island macaque (Macaca pagensis), also called the Pagai or Bokkoi macaque is an Old-World monkey native to the Mentawai Islands on the west coast of Sumatra. Groups of Pagai Island macaques consist of approximately 5 to 25 individuals.

Proboscis Monkey

Species Name: Nasalis larvatus

The proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) is an Old World arboreal species with an unusually large nose, reddish-brown skin color, and a long tail. The proboscis monkey is a large species and one of the largest old-world monkey species native to Asia.

Rhesus Macaque

Species Name: Macaca mulatta

The rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta), commonly known as the rhesus monkey, is a species of Old-World monkey. Rhesus monkeys are diurnal animals, both arboreal and terrestrial.

Sela Macaque

Species Name: Macaca selai

The Sela macaque is a monkey of the Eastern Himalayas, named in 2022 by seven scientists of the Zoological Survey of India. It was split from the Arunachal macaque on mitochondrial DNA, after Sela Pass kept the two apart for about 1.96 million years. Its holotype is a photographed specimen rather than a preserved one, and the GBIF backbone still does not carry the name.

Selangor Silvered Langur

Species Name: Trachypithecus selangorensis

The Selangor silvered langur (Trachypithecus selangorensis) is a leaf monkey living on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. Like most leaf monkeys, the Selangor silvered langur usually lives in groups of a single adult male and several adult females and their young offspring.

Siberut Macaque

Species Name: Macaca siberu

The Siberut macaque (Macaca siberu) is an endangered macaque species native to the island of Siberut in Indonesia. It was previously thought to be conspecific with the Pagai Island macaque (Macaca pagensis), which is paler overall, but this arrangement was polyphyletic.

Stump-tailed Macaque

Species Name: Macaca arctoides

The stump-tailed macaque, also known as the bear macaque, is an Old World monkey endemic to Cambodia, northeastern India, southwestern China, Myanmar, and Laos, from northwestern Peninsular Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Sunda Pig-Tailed Macaque

Species Name: Macaca nemestrina

The pig-tailed macaque (Macaca nemestrina), also called the Sundaland pig-tailed macaque and Sunda pig-tailed macaque is a medium-sized macaque native to southern Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Pig-tailed macaques also have long legs and hairless snouts.

Tibetan Macaque

Species Name: Macaca thibetana

The Tibetan macaque (Macaca thibetana), also called the Chinese stump-tailed macaque is a macaque native to eastern Tibet, eastern Guangdong, and northern Shaanxi in China. Tibetan macaques are the largest of the macaques and have a strong, muscular build with dense fur that ranges in color from gray to brown.

Tonkean Macaque

Species Name: Macaca tonkeana

Tonkean macaques also known as Tonkean black macaques, are endemic to the central part of the island of Sulawesi and the neighboring Togian Islands in Indonesia. Tonkea macaques are pretty intelligent and creative.

Toque Macaque

Species Name: Macaca sinica

The toque macaque (Macaca sinica) is a red-brown Old World monkey endemic to Sri Lanka, known as the rilewa or rilawa. Its common name refers to the strand of hair on its head that resembles a brimless hat.

White-Cheeked Macaque

Species Name: Macaca leucogenys

The white-cheeked macaque (Macaca leucogenys) is found only in Medog County in southeastern Tibet and the Arunachal Pradesh state of India. The species was first discovered and described by Chinese primatologists Peng-Fei Fan, Cheng Li, and Chao Zhao in the American Journal of Primatology in 2015.

Extinct Macaques

Although no English names were given to these macaques, they are extinct now.

†Macaca anderssoni
†Macaca jiangchuanensis
†Macaca libyca
†Macaca majori Schaub
†Macaca majori Azzaroli
†Macaca florentina

Macaques By Taxonomists

The macaques are sorted by year of discovery/classification by various taxonomists starting with the oldest macaque.

Scientific Name	Common Name	Classification Year	Taxonomist(s)	Profession
Macaca sylvanus	Barbary Macaque	1758	Carl Linnaeus	Swedish taxonomist
Macaca silenus	Lion-tailed Macaque	1758	Carl Linnaeus	Swedish taxonomist
Macaca nemestrina	Sunda Pigtail macaque	1766	Carl Linnaeus	Swedish taxonomist
Macaca sinica	Toque Macaque	1771	Carl Linnaeus	Swedish taxonomist
Macaca mulatta	Rhesus Macaque	1780	Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann	German Zoologist
Macaca radiata	Bonnet Macaque	1812	Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire	French Naturalist
Macaca fascicularis	Crab-eating Macaque	1821	Stamford Raffles	English Statesman
Macaca nigra	Celebes Crested Macaque	1822	Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest	French Zoologist
Macaca maura	Moor Macaque (Short-tailed)	1825	Heinrich Rudolf Schinz	Swiss Naturalist
Macaca arctoides	Stump-tailed Macaque	1831	Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire	French Zoologist
Macaca assamensis	Assam Macaque	1840	John McClelland	British physician
Macaca ochreata	Booted Macaque	1841	William Ogilby	Irish Zoologist
Macaca nigrescens	Gorontalo Macaque	1849	Coenraad Jacob Temminck	Dutch Zoologist
Macaca cyclopis	Formosan Rock Macaque	1863	Robert Swinhoe	English Naturalist
Macaca leonina	Northern Pig-tailed macaque	1863	Edward Blyth	English Zoologist
Macaca thibetana	Milne-Edwards’s Macaque	1870	Alphonse Milne-Edwards	French Ornithologist
Macaca fuscata	Japanese Macaque	1875	Edward Blyth	English Zoologist
Macaca tonkeana	Tonkean Macaque	1899	Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer	German Paleontologist
Macaca hecki	Heck’s Macaque	1901	Paul Matschie	German Zoologist
Macaca pagensis	Pagai Island Macaque	1903	Gerrit Smith Miller Jr.	American Zoologist
Macaca siberu	Siberut Macaque	1995	Agustín FuentesAnd Olson	American Primatologists
Macaca munzala	Arunachal Macaque	2005	Sinha, A.; Datta, A.; Madhusudan, M. D. & Mishra	Indian Primatologists
Macaca leucogenys	White-cheeked Macaque	2015	Li, Zhao, Fan	Chinese Primatologists

Cite this page

BioExplorer. (2026, October 9). Macaques. https://www.bioexplorer.net/animals/mammals/monkeys/macaques/

Key References

^[1] – “MACAQUE | Meaning & Definition for UK English | Lexico.com”. Accessed November 12, 2022. Link.
^[2] – “Macaque Models of Human Infectious Disease – PMC”. Accessed November 12, 2022. Link.
^[3] – “B-virus from pet macaque monkeys: an emerging threat in the United States? – PMC”. Accessed November 12, 2022. Link.

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Arjun Jayakrishna

CEU Certified, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Avian biology writer and wildlife photographer at BioExplorer.net. Completed Ornithology: Comprehensive Bird Biology from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (10.0 CEUs, 93% average). Pursuing HBSc at University of Toronto Mississauga.