Why do most primates look like humans? What is the connection between them?

Although ordinary people don't care about "where people come from and where they will go", they are inevitably interested when it comes to such issues. However, the more interesting related question is: Who do people look like most? The general answer is that humans are most similar to primates. Evolutionary fact

In common concepts, primates or apes (apes) are universal. However, primates include many kinds, such as chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, gorillas, baboons, macaques and so on. Although they belong to the same primate, their relationship with humans is different from that of distant relatives and close relatives, so it is different to find the same attributes, personalities, behavioral characteristics and looks from primates.

The distant relatives of human beings in primates are orangutans, gorillas, baboons and macaques. For example, orangutans were separated from humans and other primates about 14 million years ago, while gorillas were separated from humans about 7.5 million years ago. And 5.5 million years ago, humans separated from primates. After that, the remaining primates are a large group called Pan, including chimpanzees and bonobos. Bonobos were separated from chimpanzees about 2.5 million years ago. That is to say, chimpanzees and bonobos are separated from each other only after they are separated from humans, so they are closest to humans and are the best close relatives to know humans. Some researchers even think that humans, chimpanzees and bonobos should be classified as a big subspecies of primates-Homo. However, quite a few people think that human beings are supreme, and of course they disdain to associate themselves with chimpanzees and bonobos.

If you want to understand human beings, it is best to observe chimpanzees and bonobos, because these two closest relatives of human beings have the most similar habits, personalities and behaviors, or many behaviors of human beings come from them.

Chimpanzees are violent, hierarchical and cruel, mainly males, and fight to solve conflicts; Bonobos, on the other hand, love peace, mainly females, and solve problems and conflicts with pleasant love and coordination. Human beings are characterized by two sides, which come from chimpanzees and bonobos. The aggression, power desire and patriarchal trend of human beings are attributed to chimpanzees; And human's love for peace, egalitarianism, female rights and enjoying sex come from bonobos.

Chimpanzees represent the devil's side of the dual nature of human beings, while bonobos represent the gentle side of the dual nature of human beings. Chimpanzees have bigger heads, thicker necks and wider shoulders, while bonobos are straighter and slimmer. When standing or crawling vertically, bonobo's back looks more stretched than chimpanzee's because of bonobo's humanoid physique. Because of this, bonobos are compared to "Lucy", the ancestor of mankind-Australopithecus.

through nearly 2 years' research, biologist Frans has observed the similarities between chimpanzees and bonobos and humans not only from the aspects of behavior and personality characteristics, but also from the sequence and structure of DNA, and their DNA is almost the same as that of humans. Therefore, if we want to understand humans from the duality of biology and reality, we must fully understand chimpanzees and bonobos. Power struggle: Chimpanzees and people

The combination of Lian Heng is the usual means for human beings to pursue power. In fact, chimpanzees use it more skillfully. The Anam Zoo in the Netherlands is fighting for the highest power of the chimpanzee population among three chimpanzees. Nicky is 17 years old, at the mature stage. Physically, she is an upstart, but she seems a little young to be a leader. Another man named Ye Luon is physically unfit to be a leader, but he is far-sighted. There is also a chimpanzee named Root, which is the strongest among apes. It can take away any male orangutan's food or drive them away, and no orangutan can restrain Root. So Root was born to be a leader.

So, Yeron and Nicky joined forces against Root, Yeron helped Nicky defeat Root, and since then Nicky became the leader, and Yeron became the strategist. However, after seizing power, the two leaders seemed to get carried away. After Yeron helped Nicky seize power, Yeron could share sex with other females with Nicky in exchange. However, shortly after seizing power, Nicky forgot who helped it seize power, thus interfering with Yeron's sex life. Their conflict lasted for several months. One day, Nicky and Yeron fell out completely, and Yeron left Nicky.

Root, who saw the opportunity, regained the throne that night. After taking power, Root was deeply loved by female orangutans. Nicky and Yeron, who lost their power, felt depressed and lost a circle in shape. However, they are well aware of the strategy of seizing power After a while, one night, Nicky and Yeron made up, and cooperated to raid Root, which was similar to the cruelty of human attacking the same kind. Root's body was covered with deep wounds left by Nicky and Yeron's attack. He was bleeding all over and his fingers and toes were broken. And the most deadly and humiliating thing for the male is that Root's testicles are missing. The veterinarian concluded that the testicles were squeezed out, and the breeder later found Root's testicles in the cage. Nicky and Yeron humiliated Root and regained power after defeating it. Root also died.

After losing power, the sadness, frustration, frustration, anger and sadness of chimpanzees are very similar to those of people. After Root in the chimpanzee story above seized power, Yeron was very painful and depressed, even went on a hunger strike for several weeks, refused to socialize, and his face was full of empty expressions, losing power, as if his soul had also been lost. Isn't that the case with humans? Peaceful coexistence: bonobos and humans

Bonobos represent the gentle side of the two sides of human beings, but this is related to their large number of sexual behaviors. Bonobos resolve conflicts through sex and achieve the goal of peaceful coexistence, which seems to be similar to and different from humans.

bonobos' attitude towards sex, like other activities in life, has no taboos. They can immediately switch from eating to sex, from sex to play, from grooming to kissing. Moreover, whether they kiss the same sex or the opposite sex, they all have an iconic French kiss-french kiss.

Through a lot of observation, Frans found that bonobos can have sex for sexual intercourse, or have sex to calm things down, and they can also take sex as a sign of love. However, for human beings, sex is only associated with reproduction and satisfying desires, but there is a lack of sex to resolve contradictions (but there is sexual bribery in human beings). Even between the same sex, in order to resolve disputes, bonobos will use sexual behavior to make peace.

Frans observed that the love of bonobos is subtle, and even when they were very young, they all knew to solve disputes by sexual means. For example, on a branch, a young female orangutan was blocked by a young male orangutan. The former wanted to overtake the latter, but the latter refused to give in. Maybe the male orangutan is afraid of falling off the tree, or maybe it is intentional behavior. There are two ways to solve this problem. One is that the female orangutan bites the male orangutan's hand on the branch < P > and asks the male orangutan to move his hand to make way for it, but the result may be very bad. The other is negotiation, and the result may be good.

The female orangutan chooses the latter. But this kind of negotiation is not language and posture, but sexual behavior. The female orangutan turned around and put her sensitive part on the arm of the male orangutan. In this way, the female orangutan slowly climbed over the male orangutan. Although these two orangutans are underage, they already know how to communicate, compromise and understand each other sexually.

However, the peace and gentleness of bonobos are not only due to their universality or their use of sex as the only means of communication and coordination. They are different from the frequent use of violence by chimpanzees in that the bonobo society is headed by females. This in turn stems from biological and social characteristics.

Physiologically, estrogen secreted by females can make the personality of biological individuals more gentle and flexible, while androgen can make biological individuals more violent and aggressive. Therefore, in the bonobo society where females are in power, irritability and violence lose their natural motivation. On the other hand, because females are in power, older female orangutans have the highest power in dealing with all kinds of affairs in the community, and the most important thing is the distribution of food. Why are older female orangutans in power, but there are other reasons.

On the one hand, young female bonobos are unwilling to replace experienced female orangutans, on the other hand, male bonobos benefit as much as chimpanzees. Because, because of pan-sexual behavior, bonobo males don't fight for power for sex, while females in power are generally elderly, so male bonobos can be irresponsible and taken care of.

In this case, how is the peace and gentleness between bonobos and humans similar? Today's humans are monogamous, as opposed to bonobos. Humans also had behaviors similar to bonobos in the early days, and there are still traces of these behaviors today. For example, the early Hawaiian residents behaved like bonobos and were considered as "sex is the ointment and glue of the whole society".

Only from the perspective of loving peace and pursuing sexual pleasure, human beings are indeed like bonobos. The explanation along this line is that a human society that is more tolerant of sex is more gentle than a society that is not. Studies have found that oxytocin plays a special role in sexual behavior, because it can make creatures more gentle and reduce aggression. Males, in particular, will accelerate the synthesis of oxytocin in the brain after sex. Therefore, in a more tolerant human society, there may be more oxytocin in the human body.