Rhesus macaque
species of Old World monkey
The rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta), colloquially rhesus monkey, is a species of Old World monkey in the Macaca genus. There are between six and nine recognised subspecies split between two groups, the Chinese-derived and the Indian-derived. Generally brown or grey in colour, it is 47–53 cm (19–21 in) in length with a 20.7–22.9 cm (8.1–9.0 in) tail and weighs 5.3–7.7 kg (12–17 lb). It is native to South, Central, and Southeast Asia and has the widest geographic range of all non-human primates, occupying a great diversity of altitudes and habitats.
The rhesus macaque is diurnal, arboreal, and terrestrial. It is mostly herbivorous, feeding mainly on fruit, but also eating seeds, roots, buds, bark, and cereals. Rhesus macaques living in cities also eat human food and trash. They are gregarious, with troops comprising 20–200 individuals. The social groups are matrilineal. Individuals communicate with a variety of facial expressions, vocalisations, body postures, and gestures.
The public source identifies “Rhesus macaque” as species of Old World monkey. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Rhesus, macaque and species.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q156606. The Library of Congress control number is sh85113626. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rhesus macaque” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.