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Bonobos Join Chimps As Closest Human Relatives
sciencehabit writes "Chimpanzees now have to share the distinction of being our closest living relative in the animal kingdom. An international team of researchers has sequenced the genome of the bonobo for the first time, confirming that it shares the same percentage of its DNA with us as chimps do. The team also found some small but tantalizing differences in the genomes of the three species—differences that may explain how bonobos and chimpanzees don't look or act like us even though we share about 99% of our DNA."
I read about this yesterday on Ars. In the second-to-last paragraph, they talk about how Bonobos are well within the standard deviation for chimps, so genetically speaking, they should be the same species. I believe they were even once considered to be the same species, but were separated due to the size and behavior differences. In light of this new evidence, I believe it may cause them to be considered a "sub-species", much like dogs are to wolves.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
Irrelevant. Geographic separation is a direct cause of speciation. Gene pools stop mixing, genetic drift pushes two similar groups far enough apart that they are no longer compatible.
The difference from humans to other humans can be 3 million base pairs, (0.1%), for perspective. 30 million (a factor of 10) doesn't seem like that much.
Well dog == wolf == dingo is true, they are all Canis lupus (C. lupus familiaris, C. lupus lupus, C. lupus dingo).
Coyote and Jackal (and occassionally wolf) are used for other species within the Canis genus, so are closely related.
Foxes are members of the same sub-family, but a different genus, so the least related among the bunch.
Also Canis Lupus and Canis latrans are able to produce viable offspring, but the viability decreases across generations. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canis_lupus_X_Canis_latrans
He effected a bored affect.
So Chihuahuas and Great Danes are different species?
No. They may be physically incompatible, but they are not genetically incompatible. If you inseminate a Great Dane with Chihuahua semen, it would have fertile puppies. Additionally, they could both interbreed with dogs of intermediate size. If A is the same species as B and B is the same species as C, then A is the same species as C.
Actually, no. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
.sig withheld by request
Not so. See "Ring Species"
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I decided to look, I found this:
Hybridizations
Hybrids between common chimps and bonobos in captivity have occurred
But I can't find a lot more than that. I was looking for pictures.
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They aren't. Chimpanzee is a genus (Pan) not a species. Bonobo (Pan paniscus) is a species on chimpanzee. The other extant species of chimpanzee is the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Those two species of chimpanzee are diffierent species from one another for the same reason any other two species of animal in the same genus are, they can't reliably produce offspring that can themselves reliably produce offspring.