Orangutans, not chimps, may be our closest relatives.

[PraedSt]

I love primates. I'm going to be a Lemur keeper for a day at a nearby zoo later in the year. I regularly visit Twycross Zoo, which has a big primate bias. And just from looking at, interacting with and seeing documentaries about Orangutans...they do, to me, seem to be the most human of primates.

Zoos and bookshops- can easily spend a whole day in either.

Back to the topic, I've noticed the difference you mentioned; especially in young infants. I've stared at young orang in zoos, and once or twice you catch their eyes and get into a bit of a staring contest. I swear you can almost see them think. Of course you get a bit of that with chimps, but I noticed a difference in scale. It's small, but it's there.

Again, totally unscientific. I could well have imagined it all.

[PraedSt]

I see my attempt to generalize the question hasn't worked very well. My gut feeling is that claims of xx% commonality of DNA between species are not made with the technical precision one should require in technical statements by each person making such claims. If true, this can lead to embedded levels of ambiguity in such claims resulting in the claims being meaningless. This is similar to claims about the global average temperature which is another case where the experts, to my knowledge, have not defined the term nor the details of the process for determining the Earth's average global temperature. My questions should be taken as real inquiries not as attempts to impune the intentions of those making such claims. I really don't know what percent commonality of DNA means.

My introduction of clones was not an attempt to either promote or oppose cloning. I was merely trying to control the experiment by removing as many random effects as I knew about. If clones are not used, the random variation of genetic codes among individuals within a species could affect the results. If you can be more specific about my use of specialist jargon, I'll try to clarify.

There's a good synopsis on molecular analysis in the actual paper, page 10-12. Given the subject of the paper, I presume it's slightly biased; but I think it may answer some of your questions. I'd like to summarize it myself but, like I said, I don't know enough about this.

Direct link to pdf paper.

[PraedSt]

Bottom line: the fact that humans and chimps have a smaller genetic distance than humans and orangs is not inconsistent with humans and orangs being closer relatives. It would, however, apparently require that orangs have evolved faster than either humans or chimps.

This is interesting. Thanks.

[PraedSt]

The wikipedia article on the chimpanzee genome may interest some people:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee_genome_project

I read that. Quantifying the differences seems insanely complicated. And expressing it in one number seems even more so.