Human-Chimpanzee Divergent Genetics Essay

In the National Geographic documentary film, Among the Wild Chimpanzees, Jane Goodall pursues her desire to understand and investigate the foreign chimpanzees as it was a study of three generations on chimpanzees which was the longest study of any wild animal group in the world. Jane Goodall grew up in Bournemouth, England and since she was a young child, she was always fascinated with animals which enlightened her passion in investigating these chimpanzees even though many said, “You’ll never get near the chimpanzees.” Regardless of this, Jane Goodall’s approach to studying the chimpanzee's became revolutionary as it allowed future generations to further investigate chimpanzees. When the anthropologist Louis Leakey sent Jane on a mission

What makes a primate a primate? A primate is defined by its many incredible features. A primate is a mammal that has certain characteristics such as: flexible fingers and toes, opposable thumbs, flatter face than other mammals, eyes that face forward and spaced close together, large and complex cerebrum, and social animals. What makes a primate a primate is its characteristics. Some of the physical features primates are identified by is their teeth, snouts, eyes, ears, arms, legs, fingers, and toes. Human evolution is a big part of humans being primates, and having similar features and characteristics make humans to be considered to be a primate, but both humans and non-humans have differences.

In the Article “The 2% Difference” by Robert Sapolsky explains that scientists have decoded the chimpanzee genome to discover 98 percent of human DNA is similar. In Sapolsky article he goes on to explain the two percent difference humans and chimpanzee. A few of his discovered was that “Chimps excel at climbing trees, but we beat them hands down at balance-beam routine; they are covered in hair, while we have only the occasional guy with really hair shoulders” (Angeloni pp.40 2016). Physically we look different and can do different physical activities then chimpanzee. Sapolsky continues by saying how we have differences in social behavior. It is known

Throughout the term, reading the book, “Through a Window” by Jane Goodall has been quite intriguing for me, in that it has inspired me with new ideas and perceptions about how our own species has evolved over time. I have really enjoyed seeing the many similarities that hominids share with other primate species, especially chimpanzees. Goodall’s research only further proves that we are not only extremely biologically similar to chimpanzees in our DNA, but have many behavioral similarities as well. The film, “Monkey in the Mirror” also shows support for our likeness in intellectuality. These documented findings on chimpanzee and human resemblances provides the strong evidence needed to conclude the fact that humans do indeed share a common ancestor with great apes.

According to my observation, even though Chimpanzee, and Gorilla are similar, they differ in many other ways when we go deeper in physical, and behavioral traits. However, both species also share the majority part of their DNA with Humans. Based on some reliable researches, some scientists realized that humans did not come from apes but instead shared common ancestors. As a matter of fact, humans and Primates are different, but share most of their genome, explaining why we found some similar patterns of behavior among humans, and

We share almost 99 percent of our genetic material with chimpanzees. Yet we have several traits that are very different. Two legged walking, or bipedalism seems to be one of the earliest of the major hominine characteristics to have evolved. To

The Human Genome Project is a worldwide research effort with the goal of analyzing the structure of human DNA and determining the location of the estimated 100,000 human genes. In parallel with this effort, the DNA of a set of model organisms will be studied to provide the comparative information necessary for understanding the

According to National Geographic, scientists have sequenced the genome factor of the chimpanzee and found that humans are 98.5% similar to the ape species. The chimpanzee is our closest relative in the animal kingdom; however, some people are not aware of our resembling traits with chimpanzees. Jane Goodall’s, In the Shadow of Man, describes some similar traits humans and chimpanzees have such as their facial expressions and emotions, use of tools, and diet.

Over the last 10 years scientists have been involved in the progression and completion of the Human Genome Project. "Scientists working on this project have developed detailed maps that identify the

A total of 510 DNA codes have been lost throughout the process of human evolution

Though HAR1 was present in other species, it had evolved extremely slowly until the emergence of humans. “The fact that HAR1 was essentially frozen in time through hundreds of millions of years indicates that it does something very important; that it then underwent abrupt revision in humans suggests that this function was significantly modified in our lineage,” writes Pollard. HAR1 is named so because it seems to have rapidly evolved after humans and chimpanzees split from a common ancestor. HAR1 is also unique in that it does not encode a protein. Before the research done and discoveries made by the Human Genome Project, scientists previously thought that all genes required proteins as the building blocks to their sequencing. Researchers now know that these protein-encoded genes make up only 1.5 percent of our DNA. The other 98.5 percent – sometimes referred to as junk DNA – contains regulatory sequences that tell other genes when to turn on and off. “…You do not need to change very much of the genome to make a new species. The way to evolve a human from a chimp-human ancestor is not to speed the ticking of the molecular clock as a

According to Chimpanzee, an example of a homologous structure it shares with its descendants is its relatively large skull. As the animals became more evolved their skull shapes started to change to accommodate for a larger brain. This size difference is shown in Figure 2 because you can see the difference in the brain and skull size of the chimpanzees (bottom) and humans (top) (Chimpanzee). This is because Cranium size is determined by brain size and recent evidence by (Dumas, 2012) shows that this is likely determine by a protein domain called DUF1220. DUF1220 is a domain, a sub section of a gene, which is about 65 amino acids long and expressed mostly in neurons (DUF1220). Research (Dumas, 2012) shows that more copies present in the genome the larger the brain size is in that animal. Humans have 270 copies and the trend goes down from there with Chimps having 125, Gorillas 99 and marmosets 30 and mice just one (Dumas). This research shows the reasons hominids increased in brain size is because there was a mutation that increased the amount of DUF1220 in their lineage which led to gradually larger brain sizes. Since the Chimps split off (Figure 1) before this mutation their brains did not increase in size; hence the reason they are still similar to the common ancestor of both chimps and humans.

Chimpanzees are considered as human’s closest living representation, possessing numerous characteristics and similarities of our genetics. Scientifically named Pan Troglodytes, they are widely classified as great apes under the Hominidae family and are one of the species in the genus Pan. Chimpanzees are only found in one continent in the world, Africa. They are distributed throughout the central and western regions of Africa, specifically Tanzania and Uganda.

Humans are the weirdest species I have ever encountered; they are so different from an Australopithecus afarensis (A. afarensis) like me. Humans are way taller than me, an average human is about 69.4 inches for males and 63.8 inches for women (Statistic Brain RSS, 2014) while men of my species barely pass 4 feet and women barely reach it (Australopithecus Afarensis, 2014). Although my species has similarities to humans, like bipedalism, the ability to walk on two legs, and a similar dental structure, we are completely different because our ape-like ancestors (Australopithecus Afarensis, 2014). A. afarensis ancestors are very primitive and closely resemble apes that they actually look like them but, due to the fact that they are evolving, they have distinctive features that make them human. Humans and A. afarensis are different because of their exponential maturity, sexual dimorphism, and hair density, making them more human than we actually think.

Human evolution is the gradual process in which people, or Homo sapiens, originated from apelike ancestors. Scientific evidence, particularly in the form of fossils and secondary remains, show that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people evolved over a period of approximately six million years. Humans are primates. Both genetic and physical similarities show that humans and the great apes (large apes) of Africa, chimpanzees (including bonobos, or so-called “pygmy chimpanzees”) and gorillas share a common ancestor that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago. The volume of fossils found in Africa suggests that most evolution occurred there and is likely the place of origin for early humans. This brings to fruition the “out of Africa” theory, also called the “single-origin hypothesis.”