Going Ape

Here are images of two stamps depicting Old World monkeys, designed by South African artist Paul Bosman (1929- ), printed by lithography, and issued for use in South West Africa (now Namibia) on October 1, 1980, Scott Nos. 465 & 466, plus relevant photos.

- nethryk

Vervet monkey (Chlorocebus pygerythrus, formerly aka Cercopithecus aethiops pygerythrus).


Chacma baboon, aka Cape baboon (Papio ursinus).

Hello,

greetings from Germany.

Here is a postmark and a stationery that the Motivarbeitsgemeinschaft Zoologie issued in 2015 celebrating 25 years and 150 year Zoo Hannover.

Early this year Fiji issued a few monkeys for the Year of the Monkey; this one apparently Macaca fascicularis.
Hi Schiwo, you are new to the SC? Welcome! Kris

Welcome Schiwo and hello again Kris, and thank you Nethryk for adding to the thread. I have been away travelling for more than two months and am catching up with things - the glut of Year of the Monkey issues has passed (and I prefer natural monkeys to the many Chinese paper cuts on those stamps, see Sierra Leone's, above, for my preference!). But as usual, the African states are trying to boost their coffers with new animal issues, like these from Ghana:








I like patas monkeys - not many zoos have them. They have been called the greyhounds among monkeys since they spend a lot of time on the ground in the savanna grass, standing upright on their long legs to look for predators, and galloping to the nearest tree if one is spotted. They are also known as "hussar" or miltary monkeys because of the moustaches seen best on the faces of adult males.

Hi, Cobie, welcome back - I agree with you on the comics-like pictures of monkeys and apes, somehow these animals are much too serious to be shown that way. Here is a Common squirrel monkey from one of the beautiful United Nations sets of endangered species (how endangered is it?). And a photo from the Sciencephotolibrary on the web.

Hi Kris:

Thanks for that one - this was part of the UN's yearly issue of Endangered Species, and in 2007 all twelve issues (4 for each of the three UN offices, New York, Vienna, and Geneva) were of primate species.

Here are the four NY ones that the above was part of:



The others are, clock wise: the highly endangered drill, the collared mangabey (vulnerable to endangered)and the ring-tailed lemur (endangered). The common squirrel monkey which is illustrated in your post too is not considered endangered but several other squirrel monkey species are or could become so since they occur less widespread.

The drill is not common in zoos and is closely related to the also endangered mandrill with its striking blue and red face. Drills are as big (but females much smaller), and the males snout is shiny black; the upper chin is red above white , not easily seen on the stamp. But like the mandrill, the animals genital and posterior regions are deeply coloured in red and blue hues:




This picture I found on Pinterest shows the details nicely.

I'll post some other interesting issues later - so you, Schiwo, nethryk, all ape and monkey and stamp collecting aficionados/das, have a great festive season and best wishes and happy collecting in 2017!

Zaire
Nature Conservation - Bonobo
February 12, 1997
Bonobo (Pan paniscus) formerly called the pygmy chimpanzee, is an endangered great ape found in a 500,000 km2 area of the Congo Basin.

Angola
Wild Animals
November 12, 1984
Set of seven, one stamp shows Common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes).

Netherlands
100 Years of the Burgers Zoo
February 25, 2013
Set of ten, one stamp shows common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes).

Thanks for the addition! It was a little quiet after the Year of the Monkey had ended but slowly, some new issues are coming out again. Even if they are from the usual African countries, they are attractive. An especially beautiful number of issues take photographs made by Joe Satorre, the National Geographic photographer, for his effort to document all animals in captivity. Recently, part of this "Photo Ark" (pictures of which have appeared on calendars)was published as a book of great interest to anyone who loves animals and is concerned about conservation issues, as it also contains stories about people who have contributed for many years to conservation. One such is Tilo Nadel of Frankfurt Zoo who with his wife and many helpers runs a large primate sanctuary and research station in Vietnam.





Each issue consists of a single stamp mini-sheet, and a set of four stamps, as seen in the St. Vincent issue; A SS MS showing the endangered golden langur, of which only four are in captivity, and a set of 4, one of which is the white naped mangabey, a highly endangered African species. The Sierra Leone MS is of a Sumatran orang-utan while its accompanying set shows bothe Western and Eastern lowland gorillas, the chimapnzee and Muller's grey gibbon.

Great Britain
The 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Charles Darwin
February 12, 2009
Set of six, one stamp entitled Anthropology bears an image of an orangutan.

Thanks Kuol, it is a beautiful stamp. Let me add some of the new African issues:



These are from Togo, with a rather attractive design. The SS MS has common marmosets on the stamp, and the pygmy marmoset, one of the smallest primates, in the surround, together with a picture of one of its young clinging to a finger. Earlier on on this thread I posted a photograph of an adult of this species with a ping pong ball. The other animal in the surround has been very rarely seen on stamps - it is the grey-shanked douc langur, a rare species from Vietnam. Its cousin is seen more often. the red-shanked douc, in which the lower legs are bright fox-red. Otherwise, the two species are similar and among the most colourful primates and mammals.

The four stamp MS shows chimpanzees and Sumatran orang-utans as well as two gibbon species, the pileated gibbon at the bottom and the Bornean agile gibbon at the top. Both are endangered, and the latter has only recently been identified as a separate species - before, it was considered a subspecies of the agile gibbon.

There is another new issue with a similar design but dedicated to Charles Darwin.

OK, I'll add a picture of the red-shanked douc.
This is part of a stamps on stamps issue with features a few primate stamps. Here, the WWF issue of Vietnam showing the douc.

France
UNESCO
July 3, 2017
Set of two, one stamp honors Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra and depicts a Sumatran Orangutan.
(Designer: Bruno Ghiringhelli)

Here is the third issue with Joe Sartore's beautiful photographs, showing a golden lion tamarin:

United Nations (New York)
Endangered Species VIII
April 6, 2000
Set of four, one stamp shows pygmy chimpanzee (Pan paniscus).