)Regardless of how one understands our relationship to the animal kingdom, many of us are interested in what distinguishes us biologically from animals, especially the animals most similar to us: chimpanzees, gorillas, and the like. Thanks to genomics and widely quoted numbers like 98% genetic similarity between humans and chimps, DNA becomes central to how we answer that question. One gene that has become popular to mention in that conversation is FOXP2. There is evidence linking FOXP2 to language, and of course language is one of those traits where humans really stand out. Buffalo buffalo may buffalo Buffalo buffalo, but they’re not getting any people to believe they can even utter such a sentence, let alone parse or diagram it.
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