chimps are homo

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spuriousmonkey

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The most interesting news lately has of course been that new research put the chimpansee in the homo family and out of the Pongida (the great apes), together with us humans. When they compared certain functional DNA sequences they arrived to the conclusion that they are 99.4 % similar.

Previous studies reached slightly different conclusions, such as 95 % last year, but were done with different, not so functional (?), sequences.

It is of course nice to see that we are not afraid anymore to admit that we are not truly special, but that we in fact still have some close family members walking around on this planet.
 
I always thought gorillas were even closer to us genetically. Or did this new revelation but chimps closer than them?
I wonder how close to us neanderthals were, 99.9?

Anyway, yes it is good to see, I swear I don't think a chimps thoughts and feelings would be very different from ours at all.
People don't believe that because they see all the buildings and stuff we've made but we just happened to get over a hump and it snowballed from there. An individual chimp would be extremely close mentally to an individual human.
 
I heard a pretty good argument from the opposition, saying that much of the taxonomy is based simply on recognizable characteristics and so forth (assuming the grouping doesn't get lines of descent wrong), so the genetic proximity is not the only thing to consider. Since *man-made* classification systems are unavoidably going to be biased about *humans*, it's not that big of a logistical leap to say that since humans are very noticeably distinct from apes, we should be classified separately.

Personally, I think that's a little backwards-looking -- cladistics is hopefully going to throw that kind of thought (in this area of science) out the window eventually. I think they should just obliterate Homo and put us in Pan.
 
Originally posted by Dr Lou Natic
I always thought gorillas were even closer to us genetically. Or did this new revelation but chimps closer than them?
Click to expand...
Nah, chimps have been known to be closest for a while now.
 
Perhaps the differences between chimps and humans have more non-genetic causes than we thought.

BTW how does a chimps neo-cortex compare with ours (or does it have one? - excuse my ignorance)?
 
Taxonomist are very odd people… don’t mess with them! Physiology or Genetic, they will classify you in what ever why they want, and no one has the right or expertise to tell them other wise! When it comes down to it: it’s just a name with no real meaning at all.
 
Maybe it actually doesn't matter that much if chimps really belong in our tiny homo group. I find it particularly interesting because this move kicks the human species rightly of its pedestal.
 
My question about neo-cortexes (can someone answer that for me) was really asking whether it made sense to say that the difference between species can be judged by the percentage difference in their genomes. It doesn't seem to make sense. Some genes must be a lot more important than others in determining their ontogeny, notably those that determine brain development. Is it possible that most of the genetic similarity between chimps and humans occurs between redundant genes and doesn't any longer count for much.

Eg - from 'The King' on another thread. " How much genetic change is needed to create a new species? Perhaps not as much as you might think. For example, changes at one or just a few gene loci might do the trick. For example, a single mutation altering flower color or petal shape could immediately prevent cross-pollination between the new and the parental types (a form of prezygotic isolating mechanism)."

Also is it not the case that we may be more physically unlike a species with a similar genome than we are like a species with a very dissimilar one by the time the genes have been full expressed in adults. I suppose I'm wondering what 'similar' means when talking about species as they actually are rather than their ancestry, although I can see that in a way this is a meaningless question.
 
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I talked to a 'monkey person' just a minute ago and apparently there is not really a qualitative difference between the cortex of for instance a chimp and human. It is more qualitative in nature. Some people do assume though that once you cross a certain quantitative threshhold the qualitative nature of the cortex changes.

I'm not sure I want to go this far, because I have no interest in ideolizing the human species.
 
Neither do I. Sometimes I suspect the neo-cortex is some sort of brain parasite or cancerous growth.
 
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