A family resemblance

We are closely related to other apes, but how similar are we really?Relative values In Our Inner Ape, Frans de Waal (an author in this week's chimpanzee genome special, page 56) unbundles the many misconceptions about the evolution of the social behaviour of primates for the nonspecialist reader. En route we learn that chimpanzees are from Mars and bonobos (‘pygmy’ chimpanzees) from Venus, though not literally. And that neither reflects what we were in our ancestral past.