We all know that monkeys are the closest things to humans that aren't humans. Chimpanzees are the closest, but we now know that gorillas come in a close second. For the first time in history, scientists have successfully sequenced the gorilla genome. This was accomplished, not by a large corporation, but by a nonprofit research center in Britain. They discovered that 30 percent of the gorilla genome is closer to humans and chimps than those two are to each other. This revelation came as a surprise because humans diverged from chimps more recently than they did from gorillas, 6 million years more recently actually. The only way this was explainable was that even after species began to change, they still continued to mate together. Gorillas also have a gene called LOXHD1, which has long been associated with speech. "We know gorillas don't talk to each other", says super-genius Aylwyn Scally. "If they do they're managing to keep it secret."
