"The chimpanzees' closest relative is not the gorilla but the human. Traditional taxonomy has reinforced our anthropocentric tendencies by claiming to see a fundamental dichotomy between mighty man, standing alone on high, and the lowly apes all together in the abyss of bestiality. Now future taxonomists may see things from the chimpanzees' perspective: a weak dichotomy between slightly higher apes (the three chimpanzees, including the 'human chimpanzee') and slightly lower apes (gorilla, orang-utan, gibbon). The traditional distinction between 'apes' (defined as chimps, gorillas, etc.) and humans misrepresents the facts. The genetic distance (1.6 per cent) separating us from pygmy or common chimps is barely double that separating pygmy from common chimps (0.7 per cent). It is less than that between two species of gibbons (2.2 per cent), or between such closely related North American bird species as red-eyed vireos and white-eyed vireos." - Ken Morley