Thursday, August 13, 2009

I say chimp, you say orang; let's call the whole thing off!

There is an ongoing debate among scholars of human evolution regarding which living primate is most closely related to humans: chimpanzee or orangutan. The question boils down to: Which of these primates do we share a more recent common ancestor with?

The molecular and geographical evidence suggests chimpanzees as our closest relatives; the orangutan argument is built primarily from shared morphological traits. In either case, what we have are competing hypotheses, neither of which has been definitively falsified as of now.

It's an important issue in human evolution, but that didn't stop The Daily Show with Jon Stewart from tackling it. Enjoy!

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Human's Closest Relative
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		Political HumorSpinal Tap Performance
at
Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments and feedback are welcome, as long as they conform to normal standards of civility and decency. I will delete comments that do not meet these standards.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

After a year: genocide by any other name

And the name, I learned this week, is: The Dahiya Doctrine.  Mehdi Hassan explains here .