About
猕 is a phono-semantic compound. The animal radical 犭 indicates it refers to a mammal or wild beast, while the right side 弥 provides the pronunciation. In traditional script, it is written as 獼. The character was created to specifically denote the macaque, an Old World monkey native to Asia. While it occasionally appears in terms for other primates, its most familiar modern use is in the word for kiwi fruit, whose fuzzy brown skin was thought to resemble a macaque's fur.