CBC Quirks and Quarks: Difference between human and ape? Hardly any (nobody here but us hominoids).

Published: October 8, 2007, 11:38 am

Tags: science stories, health amp medicine stories

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp’s Quirks and Quarks over the weekend included a long series of interviews with some top people — geneticist, paleontologists, behaviorist, etc — by host Bob McDonald to discuss how and why people are different from apes. (Wait a bit through a long, confusing intro) For one thing, that vaunted <1% difference between Homo s. and chimps isn’t even as much as it may seem — most of the difference has no functional significance. The ingredients of great apes and us, McDonald says, are virtually the same. A pinch more of this, less of that, and you get Bonzo instead of Bozo. The overall thrust of the piece, enunciated explicitly by one source, is that while old ideas separating humanity from the greater wild animal kingdom may hang on culturally, nature says there is no sense to that sensibility. -CP

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