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Chimps Belong in Human Genus?
Bradley Chapman writes "I found this interesting story from Discovery News about our ties with chimpanzees. Excerpts: 'Chimpanzees share 99.4 percent of functionally important DNA with humans and belong in our genus, Homo, according to a recent genetic study.
Scientists analyzed 97 human genes, along with comparable sequences from chimps, gorillas, orangutans and Old World monkeys (a group that includes baboons and macaques). The researchers then took the DNA data and estimated genetic evolution over time. They determined that humans and chimps shared a common ancestor between 4 and 7 million years ago. That ancestor diverged from gorillas 6 to 7 million years ago.'" Genus is the next step up from species, if you recall your taxonomy. Humans are the only living species in genus homo, currently.
Chimpanzees share 99.4 percent of functionally important DNA with humans and belong in our genus, Homo, according to a recent genetic study. Scientists analyzed 97 human genes, along with comparable sequences from chimps, gorillas, orangutans and Old World monkeys (a group that includes baboons and macaques).
We've only fully mapped the human genome so far. I bet if we fully mapped the chimp genome, we'd see many many more entries in the diff log than we thought.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
But that on the condition that i can downgrade some humans to monkey.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
to see if they can make babies?
All over North America, greasy rednecks with pimpish moustaches and long mullets are saying "What 're them scientist-types saying? They're calling me "homo"? I'm gonna kick all their asses."
Trolling is a art,
Goodman added, "In terms of culture, social behavior, language and other factors, we share many things in common with chimpanzees."
There was a guy at a nursing home I worked at that would throw poop at the staff.
Well, it may not be completely stinky, but it is close.
Our current system for categorizing the inhabitants of this is long outdated and is based largely on phsycal characteristics of the components on the creature, rather than the stuff it is actually made up of.
We find we've had to tweak this existing system to make new species fit. We've even had to add new kindoms! Many species bridge, these categories making them all the more harder to classify.
A better, more accurate, system needs to be devised based on current technologies that classify based on genetic code. The point of a classification system would be to allow us to draw similarities in creatures while studying them based on available data for ones in the same category. A genetic model would be very beneficial for this very reason.
IMHO.
For what it is worth, the raw similarity in the genome sequence doesn't need to indicate the same degree of similarity. Transcription is quite complex (much of it we still don't understand) and it is possible that small differences in regulatory regions can cause completely different parts of the sequence to be expressed.
The Antropomorphic principle is the name given by a tendency by us humans to believe that our situation is unique. It goes from believing in our divine origin, to the earth is the centre of the universe (Ptolomeic) to the sun is the centre of the universe (Copernicus), to the current incantation of the big bang (Gamow) with an ever expanding universe.
Placing humans in their own genus seems to fit right along those lines. We are unique, and no other animal deserves to be even close to us...
Keep your filthy hands off my genus, you damn dirty chimps.
I'm sure the creationists will pitch a fit if chimps are reclassified. I wonder if there would be any legal ramifications regarding the rights of chimps compared to other animals.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Humans are the only living species in genus homo, currently.
If we are the only species, that would make us "homo genus".
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
We're turning over lots of taxonomies based on some cladistics-minded genetics lately. National Geographic threw in a chart and a couple of pages about re-grouping mammals a while back.
The chimps percentage might be a bit higher than we usually hear, but that number's basically been around. (Question is, how could our definition of a genus be this open to debate?)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Kings Play Chess On Funny Glass Stairs.
(Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species)
That's the only damn thing I can remember from high school biology.
Bonus mnemonic -- the only thing I remember from high school history: "Divorced, Beheaded, She Died; Divorced, Beheaded, Survived." (How King Henry VIII's wives ended up)
Why not put them in the same Genus as us? They've had just as much time to evolve.
Clearly, we made better use of that time than they did. They slacked off instead of evolving, so they don't get to be in the same rank.
I don't get this desire to uplift losers with false titles designed to boost the self esteem of those who fell behind.
Of course now with Hollywood and TV causing humans to devolve, the Chimps will have a chance to catch up.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Its interesting that we decide they belong in our Genus and not that we belong in theirs.
t
Actually, it doesn't matter whether we use only Homo or Homo and Pan for the lineage of chimps&humans, since both genera include a monphyletic lineage. For phylogenetic taxonomy, it's matter of taste, mostly. MY taste is that there is no need to introduce changes.
Supergenus Gorilla
* Genus Gorilla
- Gorilla gorilla
Supergenus Homo
* Genus Homo
- Homo sapiens
- Homo neardenthalensisâ
- Homo habilisâ
- Homo erectusâ
[- Homo demens (e.g. Bush & al.)]
*Genus Pan
- Pan troglodytes
- Pan paniscus
[Caveat emptor: I did this from memory, there might be a mistake somewhere]
The fact is, it doesn't mean a thing to use genus, supergenus, or subgenus. What matters is that the lineage chimps&humans is monophyletic, that is, that chimps and bonobos are more closely related to us than to gorillas or orangutans.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
Did you just call my chimp gay? Cause that really pisses him off.
Now the shits gunna fly!
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
Same genus is not same as same species. Species is the most scientifically and strictly defined term than any other classification terms. All others are mostly defined on the basis of some characteristics which does not necessarily tell us the distance between one type to another. Also, species is the only definition which can be determined experimentally. To determine if two group of animals are same species or no, you need to interbreed them. If they can produce male and female fertile offsprings, then they are same species. No such experimental definition can be made for genus. Read the comment in the article, it says, '...chimps and humans split six to 10 million years ago. "That's an awful long time to be in the same genus,"...'. You see, this is how they argue about genus.
So there is no big deal, when some scientist determines humans are mostly chimps. All that s/he says is that the distance between human and chimp species is less than we thought. And mind you, statistically, there was a 50% chance that this study would have said this!
5 million years apart and we still fling our poo at eachother...
I think i see how we're 99.4% alike...
Wolves are not genetically identical to dogs, any more than beagles are genetically identical to rotweilers: the consistent phenotypic differences between dog breeds, and between dogs and wolves, are genetically determined.
If being genetically identical were the key, each human (or pair of twins) would be a species unto himself.
But what people mean by species is usually more determined by whether the animals interbreed and produce fertile offspring (this gets fuzzy with plants and is more or less irrelevant to bacteria, but still...).
Dogs and wolves are close enough to interbreed, successfully and often, and a lot of people would class dogs as a subspecies of wolf (Canis lupus latrans).
But classification by genus and higher levels is fairly arbitrary, based mostly on what people see as significant differences and similarities (e.g. people are different from apes, cats all kind of look alike). The only important thing is that the basic nesting is right, so that if species A and B have a common ancestor, and C and D are descended from B, then if A and C are in one class, B and D are also in that class.
It might be more rational to have a system that took each branching into account, but we don't have enough information for that, and it would be inconvenient to deal with.
To sum up: the argument that no one calls a wolf a dog is incorrect, but there's still no point in calling a chimp a Homo.
So far
total human reads: 23 million
total chimp reads (Pan troglodytes): over 12 million
having worked on annotation of a few of the chimp BAC clones, I can assure you the two species range from about 97% to over 99.9% similar at the DNA sequence level.
Nonsense, the human brain is at the pinical of evolution. Not only that, it has transcended evolution - we can now alter evolution and use it as a computer algorithm.
It's about time the human race realised it is in _charge_ of its own destiny, and while nature is a powerful force, the concious mind is the greatest known thing on the planet. It should be developed and nurtured.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Joey: If the Homosapiens were, in fact, "Homo-sapien", is that why they're extinct?
Ross: Joey, Homosapiens are people.
Joey: Hey, I'm not judging.
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I think a good parallel would be programming. Say you have a 4000000000 line program (I think someone estimated that this is what the DNA translates to in terms of code but it is irrelevant). I can go in and change 100 lines and make that program not behave anything like the original. On the other hand you can change a half of it without making any substantial difference in the final result. The sheer amount of identical code is a good hint but by no means an accurate measurement of how closely related to chimps we are.
And in other news, the Chimpanzee World Spokesman, uu uu waaa uuu u, says they want no part of any "tree" that has humans in it, thank you very much, and, besides, it's against THEIR religion to believe that humans evolved from Chimps. Especially the ones with fake hair.
REAL:..........MNEMONIC:
Phylum.........Please
Class...........Come
Order..........Over
Family..........For
Genus..........Gay
Species........Sex
Thanks to Robert Smigel (his cartoons) and Saturday Night Live!
1) You are obviously correct.
2) Species is most often defined: If two animals can and do interbreed, then they are the same species.
So, they argue, timber wolves and huskies are physically separated, if not genetically separated, and are thus different species. Huskies and poodles are not physically separated, so they are not different species.
Of course, this is a ludicrous argument, because poodles/huskies/great danes etc. were all recent man-made breeding experiments, derived from wolves under 5000 years ago. If they're really all that separate, they've only been separate momentarily.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Link
Ok you're right, its probably not 98%. But this article is very informative about the matter. For the most part we share at least 25% with all living things and its probably significiently higher.
Insightful part:
Once again, the DNA comparison requires context to be meaningful. Granted that a human and ape are over 98% genetically identical, a human and any earthly DNA-based life form must be at least 25% identical. A human and a daffodil share common ancestry and their DNA is thus obliged to match more than 25% of the time. For the sake of argument let's say 33%.
The point is that to say we are one-third daffodils because our DNA matches that of a daffodil 33% of the time, is not profound, it's ridiculous. There is hardly any biological comparison you can make which will find us to be one-third daffodil, except perhaps the DNA.
I think thats an excellent point.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
"Richard Dawkins perhaps provided the best visual for our link to chimps," Fouts told Discovery News. "Imagine taking the hand of your grandmother, who was holding the hand of her grandmother and so on down the line. 155 miles out, one of the women would be holding the hand of a chimpanzee."
Hrm. Now to me, this sounds likely to perpetuate the "we came from chimpanzees" style of (mis)interpretation not the idea that "we share a common ancestor with chimpanzees". So, to correct that...is the chain 155 miles long, with the common ancestor at 77.5 miles, and than it starts going daughter daughter daughter instead of mother mother mother, or is the 155 to the common ancestor, and then chimps are like 310 miles away instead?
I guess it would be useful to know what the assumptions are for generation length and armspan...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Speech is a misnomer. They are able to communicate via hand signs (ASL, for instance) if trained.
They are able to lie and insult others.
They seem to get to 3 years old intelligence and stop there.
http://www.cwu.edu/~cwuchci/quanda.html: Washoe, the most accomplished signer, has a vocabulary of 240 "reliable" signs...The chimps use the signs both singly and in combination with other signs in multiple-sign utterances. So far, one of the longest utterances observed has been a sentence of seven different signs...They have demonstrated an ability to invent new signs or combine signs to metaphorically express something different, for example: calling a radish CRY HURT FOOD or referring to a watermelon as a DRINK FRUIT. In a double-blind condition, the chimpanzees can comprehend and produce novel prepositional phrases, understand vocal English words, translate words into their ASL glosses and even transmit their signing skills to the next generation without human intervention.
I got news for you... not only does the scientific community have those ideas about how unique and exceptional humans are ("how" unique?), so does
the literary community,
the artistic community,
the philosophical community,
the musical community,
the educational community,
the list goes on...
You shall know them by their works.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
We share 50% of our DNA with lettuce - that's how common much of our genetic code is on the planet.
Last time I checked, nobody was comparing the salad aisle of the supermarket for long-lost relatives.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
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(Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species)
Ever watched any behavioral studies on chimpanzees?
It might frighten you how much of their behavior they have in common with us.
Chimpanzees have been observed
- participating in sex for pleasure (oral and otherwise),
- organizing hunts for food (they happily kill and eat other monkeys or smaller animals),
- teaching their young how to use tools (slowly and conscientiously - not haphazardly expecting the kid to just "pick it up")
- physically assaulting (and sometimes killing) a fellow group member for no discernible reason.
Sound familiar? It should. Just check out your regular TV news shows to have a keen understanding of the human savagery mirrored in chimp society.
Yeah, I think they are worthy of being included in our genus.
blue
Scientists then discovered that Apes have a 100% DNA match with Vin Diesel.
Vonal Declosion
"... you need to interbreed them. If they can produce male and female fertile offsprings, then they are same species."
... but it seems that it can happen which means the above test isn't 100% accurate.
I saw something on Animal Planet the other day where a baby Tiger-Lion mix was born and was fertile. They noted how this was extremely uncommon
I'd love for google to include scientific journals, but they all cost money, so we're forced to rely on the mainstream media for info (with all that entails).
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
It's amazing to me that this comment was modded "Insightful". Chimps have had 4-7 million years since we split from a common ancestor (according to the article) and they're still swinging in trees. Humans are reaching for the stars.
It should be obvious to any cretin that there is a definite qualitative difference between human and chimp, indeed between human and all of (observable) nature. And that supposedly insignificant quality makes all the difference. The fact that we cannot (yet) measure its true magnitude in scientific terms does not make it any less ridiculously obvious. No human is just another monkey. Not even you.
Or from the electronics geeks, for resistor values: Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly. (Black 0, Brown 1, Red 2, Orange 3, Yellow 4, Green 5, Blue 6, Violet 7, Grey 8, White 9).
Boy did my HS Physics teacher get some weird looks for that mnemonic.
Get off my lawn.
> What animal has free will?
All of them do, given their ability to sense their surroundings.
> What animal can split the atom?
The sun splits atoms all the time. You don't have to be an animal to do that!
> What animal is loved by God?
I recall a passage in the old testament about how God tried to force the Egyptians to adopt frogs and grasshoppers...so it's gotta be them!
> What animal can build an engine?
Funny, I know millions of humans can't build engines either. But I have seen hamster powered bicycles!
> What animal can love?
Ever seen elephants visit the graves of their loved ones year after year? Ever own a dog?
> What animal can speak?
Quite a few parrots and other bird species are quite capable of speech. Remember that parrot that can speak the names of objects or name an action?
> What animal can appreciate beauty?
Peahens lusting after the prettiest peacocks.
There is a cool species of birds that builds multi-story birdsnests to impress the female birds of the same species. Complete with porch entrances, awnings, the whole works! The best house-builders get the most bird tail.
> What animal can write poetry?
Chimpanzee sign language could be considered poetry. It's probably better than the post-modern crap published in recent years.
> What animal other than man is the utter pinnacle of all creation?
Toxoplasma Gondii...it's the master of humans AND cats! It's the coolest parasite out there...
You forgot a few other questions:
What animal practices altruism?
Vampire bats.
Since then, other systems have evolved, and have been tagged on. In consequence, the current "system" is really a complete mish-mash of differing systems, with no real agreement on what system applies under what circumstance.
To those who advocate DNA-based classification, I'd argue that that only works on still-living species. If we don't have the DNA, we can't do that. So, we'd end up using some other system for those, anyway, which means we'd still be using a hybrid.
The argument that chimps belong to the "homo" group seems valid enough. We're not talking about direct ancestors, but about a common ancestor who is already established as a part of the "homo" group. (Percent then becomes irrelevent. Once you can establish that common ancestor, and establish that said ancestor is already classed as being in the "homo" genus, the rest becomes moot.)
The only rational argument I can see against it is if it can be established that the chimp branch has diverged in some critical way that, even though the divergence is small, would still place it in a different genus. You'd probably want to alter the genus to the verb, rather than the noun, in this case, to show the relationship while acknowledging the difference.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Umm not quite. Dogs have been selectively bred a lot longer than 5k years first. Second breeding Timberwolves and Huskies, while possible, positively requires human intervention. It could never happen in the wild, first because the wolf would more likely kill the dog than mate with it, and secondly because wolves and dogs have very different estrus cycles.
Wolves and dogs are thus clearly different species, just as asses and horses are. Remember, asses and horse *can* mate - but it's problematic and extremely unlikely without human intervention. To be the same species it needs to be possible to mate normally - not with great difficulty and lots of outside intervention.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
When you realize that humans and field mice share 93%+ of their genes, the percentages don't seem that impressive. Also, while the a large percentage of the genes are held in common, they are not in sequences in the same order. Moreover, these studies don't take into account the new breakthroughs in "junk" DNA studies, which seem to indicate that the "junk" DNA actually serves purposes. See http://www.newswise.com/articles/2003/5/BORIS.UCD. html
Chimps ain't humans by a long shot.
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