According to modern taxonomy, we’re in certain groups with apes but not others. For instance we are all primates, and we are all simians, but only humans belong to the genus Homo. Each textbook chooses which groups to emphasise.

If you centre a camera on Homo sapiens in a picture of the “tree of life” and then begin to zoom out, you see the points where our ancestors branched off from those of more and more of the other modern apes. Even science textbooks which portray us as very separate and different from the apes we see in the zoo must finally acknowledge that we have very recent common ancestors. The rest is semantics.

Posted: November 9th 2010

See all questions answered by SmartLX

Why does it matter?

Posted: November 8th 2010

See all questions answered by Eric_PK

What we are called has no effect on what we are. Taxonomy tries to put concrete boundaries on a continuous flow of varying organisms, so there will always be grey areas. Apes or not, though, a few hundred thousand years ago there really was very little difference between our ancestors and Bonzo’s.

Posted: November 7th 2010

See all questions answered by Reed Braden

I can’t speak to why individual authors do what they do, but my understanding of the situation goes something like this. Humans can be grouped with apes (including orang-utans) under the heading of Great Apes in the Family Hominidae. Under that Family, Sub-Family Homininae includes chimpanzees and gorillas but not orang-utans, and Tribe Hominini doesn’t include the gorillas, but does include chimpanzees and bonobos. We are a different Species to all of the other Great Apes, of course.

So it’s really a matter of the level at which the author chooses to draw the line. There might be an anti-evolutionary religious motivation (“I ain’t no monkey’s uncle!”) but I wouldn’t assume that. My preference is to think at the Family level i.e, we are all in the Great Ape Family.

Posted: November 7th 2010

See all questions answered by brian thomson