Bonobos Threatened With Extinction
August 06, 2012
Three weeks old Bonobo baby Luebo is crawled by his mother Lisala
FAITH LAPIDUS: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I’m Faith Lapidus.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: And I’m Christopher Cruise. Today we tell about an African ape, the bonobo. Bonobos were the last ape to be discovered. They might also be the first to become extinct, disappearing forever.
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FAITH LAPIDUS: A new genetic map of the bonobo shows just how close these endangered creatures are to human beings. The map also shows how genetically close both bonobos and humans are to chimpanzees.
Chimpanzees and bonobos share almost ninety-nine percent of our DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid. Chimpanzees, bonobos and humans share a common ancestor. Scientists say ancestors of modern humans split away from the two ape species four point five to seven million years ago.
Chimpanzees and bonobos are very different from each other. Chimps are generally more aggressive than bonobos. We will tell more about their differences later in this report.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: The new genetic map, or genome, may help scientists learn more about how bonobos, chimpanzees and humans developed. The Los Angeles Times newspaper reported that the completion of the bonobo genome now “gives scientists a complete catalog of the DNA of all of the…great apes.”
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