Jared Diamond in his book “The Third Chimpanzee” tells us about the this species which is very close to the chimpanzee!
The chimpanzee immune system is surprisingly similar to this species!
Like most viruses that cause diseases like AIDS and hepatitis can infect chimpanzees too. But chimps don’t get infected by the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which a mosquito can transmit through its bite into this species blood. A small DNA difference makes this species red blood cells vulnerable to this parasite, while chimp blood cells are resistant!
So which is that species which is so similar to chimpanzee but worse than them since unless there is a risk of life or death, even a typical chimp would not kill another unarmed chimp!
Yes! Jared Diamond’s third Chimp is the Human!
Jared mentions how similar taxonomically chimps and humans are, as their genes differ by just 1.6%! In fact the chimps and gorillas differ by 2.3%!
Thus the chimp’s closest relatives are not the other apes with which it is classed, but the human.
In fact, the chimpanzee-human difference is smaller than some within-species distances! Going by genetic differences, humans should be treated as a third species of chimpanzee Or possibly the chimpanzee’s scientific name should be Homo troglodytes instead of Pan troglodytes.
But you may wonder If human and chimp DNA is 98.8 percent the same, why are we so different?
It is because of the play of numbers you see! Each human cell contains roughly three billion base pairs, or bits of information.
So a difference of just 1.2 percent of that equals about 35 million differences! Then again that is the Gene level! A difference of 1.2 percent makes the human, well human! Of course it may take a Noble prize worthy investigation to find out how to make him or her more HUMANE!
So don’t be very upset if someone calls you a monkey or a chimp! It’s just our distant cousin! Of course with the way the ‘Third Chimp’ is behaving, the chimp may take offense if it is compared to a human!
Of course there are some humans who are so artistic and talented that you know they are special! Do read about the artist Teejan bai…
A quick sketch with a dab of colour for a change…
Shubh ratri…
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