Our Nearest Relatives: Bonobos and Chimpanzees
What we share with our nearest surviving relatives, the male-centered chimpanzee and the female-centered, erotic, and peaceable bonobo. How that understanding helps shape who we are vs. who we think we are.
Bonobos and Chimpanzees
About five and a half million years ago the human line of descent split from the ancestor we share with chimps and the lesser known bonobos. 98.7% of our DNA is exactly the same as theirs, including some very basic traits often attributed only to humans. Are we more like the aggressive chimp or the peaceful bonobo?
Human Traits in Our Nearest Relatives
All animals adapt, develop and diversify over time to ensure their species’ survival, so it’s not surprising that we share characteristics with our nearest relatives. Some of these are less well known, and quite surprising.
In the series Discovering Our Distant Ancestors
- Genetics and Human Evolution
- She Has Her Mother's Laugh
- Neanderthal Man – In Search of Lost Genomes
- Our Hominid Predecessors
- Human Universals
- The Evolution of Human Morality: The Age of Empathy and The Bonobo and the Atheist
- The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals
- Before the Dawn: New details of human evolution revealed
Further Reading
External Stories and Videos
Active self-treatment of a facial wound with a biologically active plant by a male Sumatran orangutan
www.nature.com
Although self-medication in non-human animals is often difficult to document systematically due to the difficulty of predicting its occurrence, there is widespread evidence of such behaviors as whole leaf swallowing, bitter pith chewing, and fur rubbing in African great apes, orangutans, and others.