Orangutans Share 97% Of Their DNA With Humans!

Orangutans are among the most intelligent and endangered apes, and they share 97 percent of our DNA. They regularly employ a range of complex tools in the environment, have long-term memory akin to humans, and build elaborate sleeping nests every night in the form of leaves and branches. In their natural environment, the evergreen rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra, orangutans must take into account a number of variables at once, including the likelihood of finding ripe fruits, the accessibility, and distance to food sources, and the availability of tools to unlock sources of extractable food. It is still unknown how orangutans adjust their choices when using tools and how many variables they can consider simultaneously while choosing wisely.

Although humans and orangutans are similar at the DNA level, a comparison of the primate genome sequences revealed that orangutans have evolved much more slowly than chimpanzees and humans. The orangutan genome has fewer large DNA rearrangements than its chimpanzee and human counterparts.