Joel Kontinen
The genetic difference between humans and chimps has been evolving, if one could use that word. However, the change has gone in the wrong direction – i.e., the gulf separating us and them has become wider and wider.
Well, perhaps it might be more honest to say that the difference has not increased but now researchers have learnt of differences they were previously unwilling to acknowledge – at least partly for ideological reasons.
Museums used to put the difference at 1–2 per cent, then it became 5 – 6, then a whopping 23 and the latest figure is around 30 per cent.
The journal Nature acknowledged that the Y chromosomes of the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and humans are ”horrendously different from each other”.
We share 50 per cent of our genes with bananas without being half bananas, but that is an entirely different story.
Posts
