DNA studies establish links that indicate some of our behavior comes from a time, around five to six million years ago, before humans split from our closest African ape relatives in the genus Pan. As humans and chimps gradually evolved from a common ancestor, their DNA, passed from generation to generation, changed too. Bonobos and Humans Share Unique DNA for Bonding. Because the population split between bonobo and chimpanzee occurred relatively close in time to the split between the bonobo– chimpanzee ancestor (Pan ancestor) and humans, not all … In fact, many of these DNA changes led to differences between human and chimp appearance and behavior. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (P. paniscus) are our closest living relatives, with the human lineage diverging from the Pan lineage only around five to seven Mya, but possibly as early as eight Mya. Perhaps the formation of the Congo River initiated the separation between chimpanzees and bonobos. This was also a time of potentially large climatic changes in the African climate and changes in vegetation patterns, proposed by some to have catalyzed the origins of several hominid species and human innovations (V rba 1995). The most comprehensive study of chimpanzees to date—including multiple loci and samples from western, central, and eastern chimpanzees and bonobos—found few fixed genetic differences among chimpanzee populations and estimated autosomal F ST values between populations of 0.09–0.32, overlapping the range of differentiation seen in humans. tl;dr Although often mistaken as the same animal, chimpanzees and bonobos are two separate species within the same genus. 1–2 Chimpanzees and bonobos even share genetic similarities with humans that they do not share with each other. We share a particular piece of DNA with bonobos that is involved in affiliation and bonding, and is largely non-existent in chimps. barrier to gene flow that allowed bonobos and chimpanzees to evolve different phenotypes over a relatively short time. The t -statistic image is thresholded at t > … They are 99.6 percent genetically similar to each other, but have different appearances and vastly unique social behaviors. Differences in Jacobian warp fields between chimpanzees and bonobos based on analysis of diffusion-weighted images. Humans, chimps and bonobos descended from a single ancestor species that lived six or seven million years ago. The close genetic relationship between chimpanzees and bonobos and the release of the bonobo genome will permit future comparisons between the genomes of the two species which should aid in identifying heritable differences that underlie any such cognitive differences. We now know that hundreds of thousands of years ago, chimpanzees and bonobos were able to mate and produce offspring, leaving a genetic mark on the animals that live in the wild today.