Bonobos Humans Closest Living Relative

The Bonobo, Pan paniscus, until recently called the Pygmy Chimpanzee and less often, the Dwarf or Gracile Chimpanzee is a great ape and one of the two species making up the genus Pan. Although the name "chimpanzee" sometimes is used to refer to both species together, it is usually understood as referring to the Common Chimpanzee.
The Bonobo is endangered and is found in the wild only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Along with the Common Chimpanzee, the Bonobo is the closest extant relative to humans. Since the two species are not proficient swimmers, it is possible that the formation of the Congo River 1.52 million years ago led to the speciation of the Bonobo. They live south of the river, and thereby were separated from the ancestors of the Common Chimpanzee, which live north of the river.

Closeness to humans
Bonobos are capable of passing the mirror-recognition test for self-awareness. They communicate primarily through vocal means, although the meanings of their vocalizations are not currently known. However, most humans do understand their facial expression and some of their natural hand gestures, such as their invitation to play. Two Bonobos at the Great Ape Trust, Kanzi and Panbanisha, have been taught how to communicate using a keyboard labeled with lexigrams (geometric symbols) and they can respond to spoken sentences. Kanzi's vocabulary consists of more than 500 English words and he has comprehension of around 3,000 spoken English words. Some, such as philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer, argue that these results qualify them for the "rights to survival and life," rights that humans theoretically accord to all persons.
There are instances in which non-human primates have been reported to have expressed joy. One study analyzed and recorded sounds made by human babies and Bonobos when they were tickled. It found although the Bonobo's laugh was a higher frequency, the laugh followed a similar spectrographic pattern to human babies.

Info taken from Wiki!
With thanks to Google Earth!
Thanks to Arkive - http://www.arkive.org/bonobo/pan-paniscus/video-12e.html

Thanks for watching Loz

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Bonobos
• Humans Closest Living Relative
• Chimpanzee
• Human Evolution
• Science

[TheAist]

awesome

[LozTheAtheist]

Thank you!

[itzahazylife]

the video of them walking upright made the hair on my neck stand up..with already observed occurences of speciation in the wild, the 98% dna relation to chimps, the tool using by chimps, the physical characteristics much like humans, the transitional fossils of hominids, and chromosomal fusion, it just bewilders me how so many people stick their noses up the the idea that they are our cousins..