• Question: What animal do we share the most DNA with

    Asked by to Ditte on 20 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by , .
    • Photo: Ditte Hedegaard

      Ditte Hedegaard answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Hello

      Most of our cells contain genes which is made up of DNA. The genes determine how we look, how we function and in some cases also how we behave. This means that the animals that look and behave very similar to us will share a lot of the same genes. Before anyone had heard about genes and DNA Charles Darwin suggested that chimpanzees was the closest living relative to humans based on how we look. Later on scientist confirmed his idea by discovering that chimpanzees shares about 96% of their genes with us and that chimpanzees are the closest related animal to humans.

      I think it is really interesting to that out of the 20,000 genes in our genome, only about 800 genes will be different from the chimpanzees and that it is these genes that make us so different.

Comments

  • Photo: Ben

    Ben commented on :

    Hi @thecor4444 as Ditte says above we’re most related to chimpanzees. You may be interested to know though, that were are many genes that are essential to life and conserved across all animals and plants. We share 50% of our genes with bananas for example.