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Well, technically apes don't have tails, monkeys do, so the chimpanzee talk would be an ape talk. Learned that from her too

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In the same sense that "there's no such thing as a tree" or "there's no such thing as a fish", there's"no such thing as a monkey".

... unless you include apes.

Monkeys are just the simiiformes minus the apes. That's just a paraphyly, which is totally fine.

If you don't like paraphyletic labels for aesthetic reasons, just include the apes to make it monophyletic. The main reason we don't is that many people have strong, visceral reactions to being called a monkey.

You can't do that to fish or trees without including a bunch of things that are obviously not trees and fish.

"If it doesn't have a tail it's not a monkey, even if it has a monkey-kind-of shape. It if doesn't have a tail it's not a monkey; if it doesn't have a tail it's not a monkey: it's an ape."

With the one exception being Curious George.

Yeah but his tail was amputated, my neighbour had a cat without tail, bitten off by a dog or something, it's not that uncommon.

Perhaps the 'curiousness' of George was not his personality trait, but rather the curious affliction of his missing tail.

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