A Comparison of Apes and Man
An illustration comparing the human body to our closest relatives, the apes, titled A Comparison of Apes and Man. It originally appeared in the 1962 book Evolution of the Life Nature Library.
I’ve been watching a few documentaries on chimpanzees lately, and I’m continuously struck by how similar we humans are to our ape cousins. Our body language and social interactions closely relate, as well as our physical bodies. One major distinction between us and our ape cousins is that we’re bipedal, meaning we walk upright on two legs. Various theories exist to explain why we developed bipedalism, but it’s not known exactly why it happened. Regardless of the cause, walking upright has had major effects on our bodies and how they’re structured. Take the above image for example. It compares the human body to other members of the hominoid family, much like a police lineup. This approach is intriguing, because it shows everyone standing upright on two legs. This, along with removing all hair from the bodies, allows for an easy comparison between the species. The individuals are arranged based on their relationship to humans, so the closer they are to the right, the closer a relative they are to us.
A few things stand out when viewing a lineup such as this. Because everyone is shown standing upright on two legs, we get a sense of scale and body proportions. The first thing I noticed was the length of our legs. Human legs need to support our full body weight, and over time the bones and muscles have grown to handle this. Similarly, our arms seem to have shortened. This is most likely because we no longer need to walk on all-fours or climb trees on a regular basis, so our arms don’t need to be as long. A quick comparison between us and gibbons clearly shows which species is built for a life in the trees, and which is built to walk upright on the ground.
Illustration by Peter Poulton showing the size comparison between the human body and the gorilla body.
Humans love to think we’re special or somehow separate from our ape cousins, but a quick physical comparison between us and them reveals just how similar we are to one another. On the mental side of things, we’ve developed a self-awareness and an ability to cooperate that allowed us to rise to the top of the food chain and to colonize the globe, which our ape cousins haven’t yet achieved. We still carry much of our primal baggage with us, however, which is why our social structures and our behaviors are quite similar despite all our cultural and technological advancements.
Read more about how humans evolved and why the need for verticality is so primal to our existence here.