Apes discovered salted nuts stand (8)
I believe the answer is:
pedestal
'stand' is the definition.
(I know that stand can be written as pedestal)
'apes discovered salted nuts' is the wordplay.
'discovered' says to take the centre (dis-covered - outer letters removed).
'nuts' is an anagram indicator (nuts can mean crazy).
The middle letters of 'apes' are 'pe'.
'salted' is an anagram of 'destal'.
'pe'+'destal'='PEDESTAL'
(Other definitions for pedestal that I've seen before include "Stand for statue or basin" , "Base supporting a statue" , "Place for hero" , "A statue stands on it" , "Base for, eg, statue" .)