By Alexander Ciarfalia
Humans and chimps share a common ancestor that we diverged from about eight million years ago. Sounds like a long time, right? Well, on an evolutionary scale, that is actually a relatively short time for a species to emerge. Yet, we still make the distinction between the genus Homo and Pan – the genus that humans and chimpanzees are in, respectively. Why is this? Should this be rectified?
The last common ancestor between chimps and humans lived roughly six to eight million years ago and was named “Ardipithecus Ramidus.” On top of sharing a common ancestor with chimps, we also share 98.23% of our DNA with them. In fact, we have the same dental set as they do – our canines and molars are in the same place as theirs!
Chimps have also been observed to have their very own monkey politics. They have their own unique social ladder, with different tribes of chimps behaving differently to outsiders. Some will be more accepting of strangers and others might be a little more violent. The leader of a chimp tribe is usually an older male. He will control where the tribe goes to eat every day, and if the tribe goes hunting, he will be leading it. What’s really interesting about these alpha males is that they can rise to the top spot in different ways, depending on their personality. Some choose to scare the other males into submission, not letting them speak up, while others choose to befriend other chimps to climb the social ladder.
Besides the parallels that chimps have with humans, what are the similarities that humans have with chimps? Well for one, chimps are amazing climbers and humans have retained many instincts for climbing. There are even whole climbing gyms!
Have you ever had that sudden jerk that will instantly make you feel wide awake when you’re trying to sleep? That’s actually a leftover instinct from when we used to live in trees. Your body senses you tipping over and because of the leftover instincts of tree living mammals, it suddenly forces you awake so you don’t fall out of the tree it thinks you’re in.
Human babies can even recognize chimp and monkey faces. In a joint study conducted by the University of Minnesota, University of Sheffield in England and the University College London, human babies up to 6 months old are shown to be able to distinguish between macaques as well as two different people!
However, humans and chimps do have some differences. For one, our muscle fibers. We have slow twitch muscle fibers, which are good for slow jogging or running after prey for miles, eventually tiring them out and allowing us to make the kill. Chimps, on the other hand, have fast twitch muscle fibers, which allows for more explosive movements. This makes them about 1.3 times stronger than we are.
Human hands are also smaller and shorter than chimps, and our wrists allow for better dexterity as the bones inside our wrists can twist farther. This is likely an adaptation for tool use and crafting. Smaller, more nimble hands are much better at tying rope, putting together small trinkets and most recently, typing on computers, but worse for climbing and knuckle walking.
