What order of mammals includes humans, apes, monkeys, and lemurs? The order is Primates.
Primates are mammals characterized by grasping hands or feet, forward-facing eyes, and relatively large brains. These traits support climbing, handling food, and judging distances in three-dimensional environments. Humans belong to the primate order alongside other living apes, monkeys, lemurs, lorises, and galagos.
The word “monkey” does not describe every nonhuman primate. Apes, including chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, gibbons, and humans, differ from monkeys in several anatomical and evolutionary features, including the absence of tails in living apes. Lemurs are also primates, but they belong to a separate branch and are native mainly to Madagascar.
Primates are often confused with other mammalian orders. Rodentia includes rats, mice, squirrels, and beavers; Carnivora includes cats, dogs, bears, and seals; and Chiroptera is the order of bats. Humans are therefore both mammals and primates, with the scientific species name Homo sapiens.