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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."
Assuming you're not trolling here:
There's morphic phenotypes that are different, for one. Bonobos are actually a lot smaller than chimps as mature adults. They are also much less able to solve complex puzzles, a difference that persists even when raised in complete separation of others from their own species. There's also the biological definition of species that requires that they be able to interbreed, we have never seen that happen.
Three billion DNA pairs in human dna. 1% is 30 million. So we differ by 30 million dna pairs. To the layperson, saying we have 30 million differences explains the differences quite well versus 99% in common.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
We're related to just about every living thing on this planet that has a face. I think that's pretty mind blowing.
Nope. We're related to every living thing on this planet full stop .
After all, we all share the same ancestor if you go back far enough.
Doesn't the evidence show that bonobos and chimps split from their common ancestor long after protohumans split from the common ancestor of all three? In which case, isn't this more-or-less exactly what you'd expect?
Bonobos spent a greater percentage of their lives copulating. I think it's pretty obvious which species is more intelligent...
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The ability to freely (without human intervention) interbreed and produce fertile offspring is central to the definition of what a species is.
This definition is crap though. If animal A can interbreed with animal B, and animal B with C, but A cannot with C, then you cannot define the species. There are real world examples of this, albeit a little more convoluted : see the herring gull and lesser black backed gull.