| Chapter 2: | Humans |
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2003; Thorpe, Holder, & Crompton, 2007; White et al., 2009). There are, in fact, as many or more biological, behavioral, and physiological parallels between gibbons and humans as there are between chimpanzees and humans (see figure 1).
Humans and chimpanzees are so closely related, with a 98.9% similarity between their DNA1 (Goodman et al., 2005), that for a short while, some taxonomists suggested that they be classified in the same genus, renaming chimpanzees as Homo troglodytes (Diamond, 1992; Goodman, Tagle, Fitch, Bailey, Czelusniak, Koop, & Benson, 1990; Watson Easteal, & Penny, 2001). Partly because of Jane Goodall’s research that had found that her provisioned (artificially fed) chimpanzees were capable of infant killing, cannibalism, and murder, the popular press and various primatologists