375,881 views
9 votes
9 votes
Which two mammals do you think is the least closely related? why?

User Edovino
by
2.5k points

2 Answers

15 votes
15 votes

Answer:

Chimpanzees and man

Step-by-step explanation:

Ever since researchers sequenced the chimp genome in 2005, they have known that humans share about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, making them our closest living relatives.

But there are actually two species of apes that are this closely related to humans: bonobos (Pan paniscus) and the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). This has prompted researchers to speculate whether the ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos looked and acted more like a bonobo, a chimpanzee, or something else—and how all three species have evolved differently since the ancestor of humans split with the common ancestor of bonobos and chimps between 4 million and 7 million years ago in Africa.

The international sequencing effort led from Max Planck chose a bonobo named Ulindi from the Leipzig Zoo as its subject, partly because she was a female (the chimp genome was of a male). The analysis of Ulindi's complete genome, reported online today in Nature, reveals that bonobos and chimpanzees share 99.6% of their DNA.

User Vorburger
by
2.7k points
19 votes
19 votes
Either the Porifera (sponges) or the Ctenophores (comb jellies). The jury is still out on which group branched off the main animal line first.
User Crake
by
3.2k points