Almost Chimpanzee: Redrawing the Lines That Separate Us from Them

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For too long, Cohen persuasively argues, chimpanzees have been presented and widely understood as 'almost human,' analogues worthy of attention and protection by virtue of their similarities to us. In this wide-ranging synthesis of genetics, epidemiology, anthropology, history, and the sociology of science, Cohen demonstrates how much we can learn about chimpanzees--and ourselves--by exploring their unique qualities.


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How are we different from chimps? That's the question that Cohen sets out to answer in his absorbing account of current chimpanzee research. Too often, Cohen argues, scientists have focused on the similarity between the two species, when it is in fact an understanding of our differences that can reveal 'what, exactly, it means to be human. One scientist, for instance, believes that humanness derives from the simple fact that our babies, unlike their ape counterparts, can lie flat on their backs, which allows them to gaze into their mothers' eyes.

How human are chimpanzees? Jon Cohen, in his well-written and carefully argued report, provides an up-to-date examination of the question. It has been years, decades really, since researchers worried about idealizing chimpanzees or emphasizing their similarities to ourselves. The shift is largely credited to the fieldwork and educational activism of another pioneering scientist, Jane Goodall. Indeed, as Jon Cohen points out in his gently provocative new book, Almost Chimpanzee , the conservation-minded Goodall deliberately dwelled on people-parallels.

Chimpanzees are well established as our closest cousins on Earth; some research sets the genetic difference at a mere one percent. On the other hand, even that slight deviation set us on widely divergent evolutionary paths and, in the end, provided only one species with real power over life on Earth. He searches for the best evidence of when human and chimpanzee ancestors first separated--usually fixed at about five million years ago--and whether it was a genuinely dramatic break. He mulls over why small genetic variances have such enormous impact, leading him into a wonderfully weird discussion of whether human-chimpanzee hybrids are possible--a notion dubbed 'humanzees' by some researchers.

There's a terrific section on life expectancy built around the evolutionary biology work of University of Utah anthropologist Kristen Hawkes that neatly connects everything from chimpanzee menopause to the role of elderly females in hunter-gatherer societies. And there's a fascinating look at the importance of cooking food, which allowed early humans to spend less energy sleepily digesting their dinners and more, apparently, devising a route to world domination.

All of this leads to the ever-troubling question of what comes next. Many scientists working with chimpanzees in labs find their studies restricted or too expensive to maintain over the long term. And many conducting field research wonder how much longer the animals will last as a wild species, because of habitat loss, poaching and the notorious African bush meat trade.

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One scientist whom Cohen interviewed predicted that within 50 years only captive chimpanzees will be left alive, almost entirely due to the activities of their human cousins. It's often been said that we can look into a chimpanzee's eyes and see ourselves. And it's that very big almost that Jon Cohen so tenaciously explores in this extraordinary scientific odyssey.

There are important matters at hand here--such as the uniqueness of speech and the origins of bipedalism--but Almost Chimpanzee is far from being a cold analysis. To get at the truth, Cohen clomps through malarial jungles, travels in an RV with a baby orangutan, even handles fresh chimp sperm.


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