- chimpanzee
The chimpanzee and bonobo are humans' closest living relatives. These three species look alike in many ways, both in body and behavior. But for a clear understanding of how closely they are related, scientists compare their DNA, an essential molecule that's the instruction manual for building each species.
- Aardvarks, aye-ayes, and humans are among the species with no close living relatives. There are 350,000 species of beetles—that's an awful lot of relatives. And yet some animals, like humans, have no fellow species in existence.