"Great ape" is a specific scientific category — the family Hominidae — and includes exactly five living species groups. Here's the complete list, what sets each apart, and where they stand today.
Humans are, by strict biological classification, great apes ourselves — members of the same family as chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. It's an easy fact to overlook, but it's the reason the other four groups are often called "non-human great apes" in scientific writing.
Found across more than 20 countries in West, Central, and East Africa — including Uganda, where a wild community survives in fragmented forest habitat monitored by the Bulindi Chimpanzee & Community Project. Chimpanzees live in large, complex fission-fusion societies and are prolific tool users. Classified as Endangered.
Chimpanzees' closest relative, found in the wild only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, south of the Congo River. Bonobo society is female-led and notably less aggressive than chimpanzee society, despite the two species' close genetic relationship. Classified as Endangered.
The largest living primate, split into western and eastern species across Central Africa. Gorillas live in small, stable family groups led by a dominant silverback male and are mostly ground-dwelling, leaf-eating apes. The mountain gorilla and Cross River gorilla subspecies are Critically Endangered; other subspecies are Endangered or Critically Endangered depending on population.
Found only in South East Asia, on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, orangutans are the only great apes outside Africa and the most solitary of the group, with adults typically foraging alone. There are three recognised orangutan species — Bornean, Sumatran, and Tapanuli — with the latter two Critically Endangered, driven largely by rainforest clearing for palm oil plantations.
Despite their differences, all great apes share a set of core traits: no tail, large brains relative to body size, sophisticated tool use in several species, complex social behaviour, and — with the exception of humans — a shared, serious conservation crisis. Every non-human great ape species alive today is classified as Endangered or Critically Endangered by the IUCN.
Habitat loss is the common thread across all four non-human great ape species, but the specific driver differs by region: industrial logging and palm oil plantations in South East Asia for orangutans, mining and civil conflict zones in parts of Central Africa for gorillas and bonobos, and small-scale agricultural expansion fragmenting forest for chimpanzees across much of their wider range, including Western Uganda.
Because each great ape species faces a distinct combination of threats, habitat type, and social structure, effective conservation work tends to be built around one species in one specific landscape rather than a single generic template. The Bulindi Chimpanzee & Community Project's approach in Western Uganda — forest enrichment, corridor replanting, and community livelihood support — is tailored specifically to how wild chimpanzees actually live in a fragmented, human-shared landscape, not a one-size-fits-all "great ape protection" plan.
Are there only five great ape species? There are five recognised species groups, though gorillas and orangutans each include multiple subspecies with their own distinct conservation status, so the total number of officially recognised taxa is somewhat higher.
Which great ape has the smallest population? Among non-human great apes, the Cross River gorilla and Tapanuli orangutan are among the rarest, each with populations numbering in the low hundreds to low thousands.
Do any great apes live outside Africa or Asia? No wild non-human great ape population exists outside Africa (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas) or South East Asia (orangutans) — their entire natural range is confined to these two regions.
Every non-human great ape species alive today depends on humans making deliberate, sustained choices to protect the habitat they need — none of them can simply out-survive the pace of deforestation, poaching, and fragmentation happening across their ranges without direct, ongoing conservation intervention. Museums, zoos, and conservation organisations increasingly try to present these five groups together specifically to reinforce just how closely connected — and how collectively vulnerable — this entire family of species actually is, rather than treating each species as an entirely separate, unrelated conservation story. International cooperation between range countries has become increasingly important for great ape conservation generally, since several species' ranges span multiple national borders, requiring coordinated policy and enforcement efforts that no single country could achieve effectively working in isolation.
Educational programmes built around this five-species framework have proven particularly effective with younger audiences, giving them a clear, memorable structure for understanding the broader case for great ape conservation as a whole.
Keeping this five-species framework in mind also helps when following broader conservation news, since stories about one great ape species often carry lessons directly relevant to the threats and solutions facing the others.
You can support that focused, chimpanzee-specific work directly — support the Bulindi Chimpanzee & Community Project.