International Primate Day
International Primate Day is held on September 1. This event in the first decade of the month September is annual.
Some people believe that Humans are one of about 500 species of primates, and belong to the family Hominidae. This group also includes bonobos and chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, and orangutans and gorillas, all great apes like us. But our species now exceeds 7.8 billion individuals, meaning that we represent 99.99% of the total number of great apes, while our evolutionary relatives are endangered precisely because of our species.
Since 2014, International Primate Day has been celebrated every September 1 to reflect on the situation of the different primate species and to call for a commitment to their conservation.
Currently, a very high percentage of primate species (over 60%) are in danger of extinction according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), some already considered "critically endangered", such as the chimpanzee subspecies Pan troglodytes verus, which the Jane Goodall Institute is helping to protect in Senegal and Guinea.