I went to the National Museum of Scotland's new show, and found my spirit animal

It’s not so much the nose, I tell him. The similarity is in the small round beady eyes, and the aerodynamic forehead.

I recognise the similarities even more, when this organ grinder takes her plus one to Monkeys: Our Primate Family at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. This lovely exhibition is on until November 30, 2025, and was first shown at the venue in 2016, before touring internationally, with 500,000 visitors from six countries viewing the show.

It seems that people really love monkeys.

They are, after all, our closest relatives. Well, the hominidae - including chimpanzees and bonobos - are. The others are more distant, like the second cousin you send a card to every second Christmas.

However, I didn’t ever realise how many species there are. Apparently, over 260, with 50, from chimpanzees to lemurs, featured in the taxidermy dioramas in this exhibition.

They are frozen eternally - being bewildered by a snake, hanging upside down, swinging from a rope, carrying a multitude of cartoony-looking cheeky babies on their back or, ahem, mating.

(If I ever get taxidermied or even plastinated, in a Gunther Von Hagens style, please, give me a dignified and flattering pose, in the style of the mannequins in the fashion gallery downstairs).

I bet when they come to life at night, like all things in a museum do, it must be a wild party here.

Whatever species or stance, they’re easy to anthropomorphise.

I can practically hear a Desmond Morris voiceover in my ear, as I go from case to case, with the sounds of the jungle twinkling in the background.

The bearded emperor tamarin sounds like Hulk Hogan, but the beautiful orang-utan has a soft Scottish accent. Of course it does. Either that or it’s saying “I hate that duck”, like Keith Harris’s horrible puppet, Cuddles the Monkey, from the Eighties. Just because it has wispy red hair, don’t attribute it with a Trump voice. That’s SSPCA-level animal cruelty.

Personally, while wandering around the show, I feel an affinity with the howler monkeys, who screech from the treetops, in an angsty Munch-like mouth-agog fashion. That must be very therapeutic. However, it’s only the emotional boys who do that, while I suppose the girls just silently internalise their feelings. Seems familiar.

Although I don’t spot any in this show, I would most want to be a snow monkey. I could happily chill in an onsen all day, until my fur was saturated and every louse had been plucked from my silvery Beetlejuice coiffure. I shall jot that down as a reincarnation possibility.

Thanks to the exhibition, I also discovered that male squirrel monkeys can’t see red, because of a genetic condition that’s carried on the X chromosome. It’s rumoured that they often go right through the jungle traffic lights, in their tiny cars.

The douroucoulis - otherwise known as night or owl monkeys - are monochromats in that they see no colours at all. There’s no need, since they do all their business after dark.

Sadly, it means they never make it over the rainbow bridge.

My favourite of all is the Bengal slow loris, who has thick fur, the saddest face I've ever seen, and the sort of beautiful spatula-like fingers that would make it an excellent oboe player.

Sadly, in common with a lot of the other primates, this is a vulnerable species. It's also the only venomous mammal, as it secretes a noxious oil from a gland, which becomes a venom when mixed with its own saliva. I'm still a fan, and it might be worth the paralysis to give an animated one a sneaky wee tickle behind the ear. At least I would die happy.

Since I call him a proboscis, I request that my other half judge my primate equivalent, and he generously goes for a velvet monkey, or a galago. However, I know that I don't have their neat and nimble frames, Anne Hathaway eyes and delicate fingers. I'm more like a big-bottomed baboon, stealing food from tourists, pulling wing mirrors off cars and shrieking.

However, I am grateful for his kindness, so I will groom him thoroughly tonight.

Humans and some primates have plenty more in common, the exhibition tells us, including our opposable thumbs. That means that this digit can rotate to join other fingers, allowing us to grasp objects, make tools and use our hands for social signals.

Despite our highly evolved hands, neither species can open plastic soup containers. We all need another few million years of evolution for that.

Unless I missed it, I suppose it’d be too silly for the show to pay tribute to our shared love of bananas, though I can't stop thinking about the fruit that unites us. However, I’m happy to see they’ve gone wild for that in the gift shop , where souvenir merch includes stretchy bananas alongside plushy lemurs and smiling orangutans.

I do wonder if it’s true that monkeys peel them from the bottom up, rather than from the stalk end. My sister is big on doing it that way, as she thinks monkeys should have the final word. I'm sorry, but I think they're doing it wrong. The stalk is a naturally like the top of a zipper. Could someone get hold of the primate chief of staff and let’s cascade the information to all chimps.

In our household, we use the human method, and we get through about a dozen a week. I say 'we', when I mean ‘he’.

I usually am allowed just one, when he swiftly guzzles the rest at the rate of two a day.

See, total proboscis. Nothing to do with the nose.

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