Monkey Emoji

The full-body monkey emoji shows a brown monkey sitting on its haunches with a long, curled tail. It's the climbing, swinging, tree-branch version of the primate family, in contrast to 🐵 which is just the face and 🦧 which is a great ape (no tail).

The tail is the key detail. In biology, monkeys have tails and apes don't. That's the clean rule kids learn in elementary school. So 🐒 is correctly a monkey, while 🦍 and 🦧 are apes. Emojipedia's monkey entry describes it as "a small primate with long limbs and tail for climbing trees."

In texting, 🐒 is the action emoji of the primate group. Where 🐵 is a reaction (playful, cheeky, mischievous face), 🐒 is mid-adventure: climbing, stealing a banana, swinging off a chandelier. "The kids are literally 🐒" reads as "they are physically swinging from things." "Stop monkeying around 🐒" is the universal classic.

Like every other monkey or ape emoji, 🐒 has been weaponized as racial abuse online, particularly directed at Black people. Emojipedia notes that context is everything. Meta's Oversight Board ruled in 2026 that monkey emojis used to target Black people must be removed as hate speech. Use it for monkeys, mischief, and silliness. Never for people.

🐒 shows up in four main lanes.

Physical chaos. Kids bouncing off walls, pets climbing furniture, friends doing something acrobatic and dumb. It's the "someone is literally swinging from a rope" emoji. Parents use it constantly for toddlers. Climbing gyms, acrobats, and parkour creators use it for their own content.

Zodiac and Lunar New Year content. The monkey is the 9th animal in the Chinese zodiac), and 2028 will be the Year of the Earth Monkey (January 26, 2028 to February 12, 2029). People born in Monkey years (2016, 2004, 1992, 1980, 1968) are described as clever, curious, and versatile. Expect a huge 🐒 spike in Lunar New Year posts starting late January 2028.

Wildlife, zoo, and conservation content. Unlike 🦧, which has a single species narrative, 🐒 sits in for every monkey on the planet: capuchins, macaques, spider monkeys, howlers, baboons (technically). Documentaries, safari posts, zoo visits.

Gaming and pop culture. Sun Wukong content (Black Myth: Wukong, Dragon Ball, Journey to the West adaptations), Monkey Island the game, Curious George, Rally Monkey, and the "monkey typing" copy-pasta about infinite monkeys and Shakespeare.

The racial-abuse shadow over 🐒 is real but less intense than for 🐵, probably because the full body is harder to misread as a dehumanizing comparison to a face. Still, the Meta Oversight Board's 2026 ruling covers the whole monkey emoji family.

🐒 was approved in Unicode 6.0 on October 11, 2010, alongside the rest of the original animal emoji set. It's one of the oldest animal characters in the Unicode block, predating 🦧 (2019), 🦍 (2016), and the full wave of zoo-animal additions from the 2015-2020 era.

The monkey's presence in the first major emoji wave reflects how central primates are to human language and culture. Nearly every civilization that encountered monkeys developed mythology around them: Hanuman in Hindu tradition (one of the most worshipped deities), Sun Wukong the Monkey King in Chinese mythology (16th-century novel Journey to the West), Thoth in some Egyptian depictions (as a baboon), and the Three Wise Monkeys at Toshogu Shrine in Japan (1617 carving).

Sun Wukong in particular has had a wildly disproportionate impact on modern pop culture. His name was transliterated to Japanese as Son Goku, which Akira Toriyama borrowed wholesale for Dragon Ball's protagonist in 1984, tail and all. Game Science's 2024 smash hit Black Myth: Wukong brought him back to global audiences as the most celebrated Chinese video game of all time, grossing over $1 billion in three months.

1. 2010Approved in Unicode 6.0 as U+1F412 MONKEY↗
2. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0, available on all major platforms
3. 2016Year of the Monkey (Fire Monkey); Monkey emoji usage spikes during Lunar New Year
4. 2021Bukayo Saka Euro 2020 final: monkey emoji flood on social media sparks Meta moderation debate↗
5. 2024Black Myth: Wukong releases August 2024; Sun Wukong briefly becomes the most-searched gaming character globally
6. 2026Meta Oversight Board rules monkey emojis targeting Black people must be removed as hate speech↗

In China, the monkey is the 9th of the 12 zodiac animals. People born in Monkey years (2028, 2016, 2004, 1992, 1980) are described as clever, versatile, curious, and quick-witted. Sun Wukong, the trickster demigod of Journey to the West, is arguably the most beloved character in all of Chinese literature.

In India, monkeys are sacred. Hanuman, the monkey god, is one of the most worshipped figures in Hinduism, and real macaques at Hindu temples are treated as incarnations of the deity. Feeding them is an offering; harming them is a serious offense. The Hanuman langur has formal protection.

In Japan, the monkey (saru) connects to the Three Wise Monkeys proverb (1617 carving at Toshogu Shrine), the snow monkey (Japanese macaque), and the zodiac. Snow monkeys bathing in hot springs are one of Japan's signature wildlife images.

In Brazil and Central/South America, "new world" monkeys like capuchins and spider monkeys are the cultural default, shaping the monkey emoji's meaning in a different direction. Hispanic Twitter uses 🐒 for the Rally Monkey (the Los Angeles Angels mascot, played by capuchin Katie), the same monkey who played Marcel on Friends).

In Western online contexts, monkey emojis have been systematically weaponized as racist abuse against Black people, drawing on centuries of dehumanizing tropes. This isn't a minor edge case, it's a documented pattern that has forced platform policy changes.

• •There are over 300 species of monkeys, split into "Old World" (Africa/Asia, including macaques and baboons) and "New World" (Americas, including capuchins and spider monkeys). Only New World monkeys have prehensile tails that can grab things. Source.
• •The Rally Monkey, the Los Angeles Angels' mascot famous since the 2002 World Series, was played by Katie, the same white-headed capuchin who played Marcel on Friends.
• •A macaque in Indonesia grabbed photographer David Slater's camera in 2011 and took a selfie. PETA sued on the monkey's behalf. Courts ruled in 2018 that animals can't hold copyright, setting precedent now applied in AI copyright lawsuits.
• •Sun Wukong's name was transliterated into Japanese as Son Goku. Akira Toriyama borrowed the name, a monkey tail, a flying cloud, and an extending staff directly from Journey to the West for Dragon Ball.
• •The "infinite monkey theorem" states that a monkey hitting random keys on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will almost surely produce the complete works of Shakespeare. In 2024, a study calculated it would actually take longer than the age of the universe.
• •Japanese snow monkeys (macaques) are famous for bathing in hot springs. The behavior was first observed in 1963 at Jigokudani, where one monkey jumped in to retrieve food and the whole troop adopted the habit within a few years.
• •The Three Wise Monkeys proverb exists because of a Japanese pun. The suffix "-zaru" means "not," but it sounds like "saru" (猿), the word for monkey. A 1617 carving at Toshogu Shrine made it literal.

• •Sun Wukong, Journey to the West (16th century): The Monkey King is the breakout character of one of China's four great classical novels. He rides a cloud, wields a staff that grows and shrinks, and is strong enough to fight armies. He's the template for countless later monkey protagonists.
• •Son Goku, Dragon Ball (1984): Akira Toriyama based Goku directly on Sun Wukong. Early Dragon Ball Goku had a monkey tail, Nyoi-bo (the extending staff), and the Flying Nimbus cloud, all three straight from Journey to the West. See the detailed comparison.
• •Curious George (1941): H.A. and Margret Rey's beloved children's book monkey. George famously has no tail, which would technically make him an ape, but the Reys left the species ambiguous. He first appeared in 1939's Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeys under the name "Fifi."
• •Marcel / Katie, Friends (1994-1995): Ross's pet white-headed capuchin monkey in season 1 was played by two capuchins named Katie and Monkey. Katie also starred as the Rally Monkey for the Los Angeles Angels from 2000-2010, making her arguably the most famous individual monkey in recent American pop culture.
• •Black Myth: Wukong (2024): Game Science's billion-dollar Sun Wukong action RPG. First Chinese AAA game to achieve global critical and commercial dominance.
• •Hanuman: Revered across Hindu tradition as the monkey god of strength, devotion, and loyalty. The Ramayana's second-most-prominent character after Rama himself.

• •Monkey (full body) is U+1F412U+1F412. The face-only version 🐵 Monkey Face is U+1F435U+1F435. Don't confuse them in automated systems.
• •Shortcodes: :monkey::monkey: on Slack / Discord / GitHub. :monkey_face::monkey_face: is the face-only version.
• •No skin tone modifiers apply to animal emojis. All monkey renders are brown.
• •Content moderation note: The Meta Oversight Board's 2026 ruling covers monkey emojis directed at Black people as removable hate speech. If you build moderation tooling, this precedent matters.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.