Quote:
Originally Posted by grega94
Seems what they consider a different species for other apes, constitutes as race/culture for humans.
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Before we had genetic studies available, we could only define species based on physical characteristics. Now that we can genotype, we find that many of our previous assumptions about relations between & among species were wrong.
In regards humans, there are many obvious physical differences among subspecies (races), but that has to do with allele frequencies in different breeding populations, not differences in numbers of chromosomes or loci on each chromosome-- they are all the same among us.
The article I read didn't go into specifics, but I'm guessing they must have significantly different genetic maps among the three orang populations if they're claiming a new species.
Cf- a horse has 32 chromosome pairs; a donkey has 31. They look enough alike that one might be tempted to call them the same species, going only by appearances.