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Animal profile
Macaca mulatta
The rhesus macaque has the widest natural range of any non-human primate apart from humans, from tropical lowlands to Himalayan foothills. It lives in large multi-male, multi-female troops with clear dominance ranks. It is also the most widely used primate in biomedical research.
The Rhesus factor is named for the rhesus macaque, because the antibody that revealed it in 1940 was raised by injecting rabbits with macaque red cells. The human antigen later turned out not to be the same molecule, but the name stayed.
Human Rh-positive and Rh-negative blood types take their name from the rhesus macaque, because the original 1940 antibodies were raised against monkey red cells. Later work showed those antibodies were detecting a different antigen, but the name was never corrected.