Why Are Primates Not Classified as Homo Species Like Humans Are?
Question by Jen T.: Why are primates not classified as homo species like humans are?
•Humans belong to the genus Homo and chimpanzees to the genus Pan. Yet studies of primate genes show that chimpanzees and humans are more closely related to one another than each is to any other animals. In light of this result, some researchers suggest that chimpanzees should be renamed as members of the genus Homo.
?Discuss at least three practical, scientific, and ethical issues that might be raised by such a change in naming.
Best answer:
Answer by JasSinc
Practical:
Think about all the textbooks that would have to be updated.
Think about all the printed books that can’t be changed because they’re printed. Your children will crack open one of these and say, “What’s a genus Pan?”
Think about convincing all the die-hards that chimps belong in the genus Homo. Good luck with that. there are still botanists who use “Division” instead of “Phylum” because they’re stubborn and old.
Scientific:
It’s a historical / priority thing that chimps were placed in genus Pan and humans weren’t.
The Linnaean taxonomy was more about morphology than ancestry. Our upright stance, bipedal running, funny shaped feet, relative hairlessness, breasts, concealed female sexual receptiveness make us not be chimps.
Ethical:
If chimps are placed in the Homo genus, someone is going to want to grant them “rights” beyond those of other animals.
Someone is going to insist that they be taught Ameslan or similar signing language.
Someone is going to insist that they be taught that Jesus died for their sins too.
Answer by Joseph
I don’t know who “some researchers” is intended to suggest, but no one I have ever talked to in anthropology would support such a change. No matter how similar chimps might seem to be their skeletal structure differs so much from the human (spine, skull, brachiation, joints in the hand, proportions of long bones, hips, hip-leg connections) .that no taxonomist in their right mind would suggest such that humans and chimps are congeners.
It’s quite enough that the sub-family Hominini was created to accommodate the similarities of Gorillas, Chimps and Humans.
And there are no ethical issues at stake. It’s just a name. A chimp by any other name is still a chimp. You can call it Ernie or Griselda if you wish. It doesn’t make it any more human.
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