Slashdot Mirror
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?
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Our current system for categorizing the inhabitants of this is long outdated and is based largely on phsycal characteristics of the components on the creature, rather than the stuff it is actually made up of.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
Did you just call my chimp gay? Cause that really pisses him off.
Now the shits gunna fly!
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
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.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
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
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
Karma Points Come Only For Geeky Slashdotters
(Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species)
Scientists then discovered that Apes have a 100% DNA match with Vin Diesel.
Vonal Declosion
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.
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.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.