What links us to our closest living relatives

[00:00:00]I've always said I could put a female chimpanzee's humerus [music] in a medical student's exam and they wouldn't notice the difference. I don't think they would. The bone is about the same size and shape.

[00:00:11]>> [music] >> The joints are about the same size and shape. All the features are there.

[00:00:15]They're just slightly different in the chimpanzee [music] compared to the human. And that's not denigrating medical students. I'm What I'm saying is those bones are so similar. Uh and obviously if you look at other bits of chimpanzee anatomy, I couldn't put a chimpanzee pelvis [music] in a medical student's exam. They would notice it immediately. It's a completely different shape. I couldn't put the legs because they're very different. Um I couldn't put the skull. I mean the skull is, you know, vastly different in chimpanzee compared to the human. But yeah, there were there were bits of [music] in our in our closest living relatives. I mean you look at If you look at chimpanzee and gorilla [music] hands, they're very similar to our hands. They've got fingernails. Most mammals don't have fingernails, of course. [music] They have claws. Some of them have hooves.

[00:00:53]Fingernails is a is a primate [music] thing. They've all got opposable thumbs.

[00:00:58]If you go to the zoo and look at any primate, you'll you'll find [music] them with their little opposable thumbs. The more you look, the more similarities you you start to see. And there will be more similarities in [music] chimpanzees as our closest living relatives than there are in lemurs or lorises. And then if you go further afield, obviously [music] the the similarities start to um drop away.