A stunning new study from the department of evolutionary biology at UCLA has proven once again that every so often the world of science can still manage to produce something absolutely amazing: Biologists have revealed that humans are more closely related to chairs than to tables.
This is absolutely fascinating! Kudos to this team of researchers for shedding some light on the mysteries of humanity’s origins.
Scientists have long noted the visual resemblance between bipedal mammals like humans and tall, upright pieces of legged furniture like chairs and stools. This observation gave way to conclusive results thanks to UCLA’s research, which analyzed the DNA sequences of thousands of tables and chairs and compared them against the human genome using cutting-edge statistical methods. The study found that while humans, tables, and chairs all evolved from a common ancestor, chairs and humans share a far closer genealogical bond, suggesting that the two of them only diverged into separate species a few million years ago—a mere blink of an eye on the epic timescales of evolutionary biology.
“Our research shows that toward the end of the Cenozoic Era, humans and chairs shared a common ancestor that you could sit on like a chair, but which also gave birth to live young like a mammal,” said lead researcher Professor Patricia Strickland. “Eventually this organism’s genome diverged into a predominantly mammalian branch and a predominantly sellatic branch, which gave rise to the modern Homo sapien, or human, and the modern Sellasis taediosis, or chair. However, chairs and humans continue to share 97% of their genetic makeup, while humans and tables only share about 94% of the same genes.”
Sometimes science really is incredible.
While humans might be closer evolutionary neighbors to chairs than to tables, Professor Strickland also emphasized that all three species are still intertwined in Earth’s intricate genetic web. “If you go even farther back, there was a proto-mensatic organism that you could sit on, eat off of, and which produced milk for its young. This was a common ancestor not just to humans, tables, and chairs, but also to cups, orangutans, the PlayStation 3, and cows.”
We’re calling it now: this is officially the greatest scientific discovery of the week! It’s amazing that there are geniuses out there who are able to see so far into the past using nothing but their minds. Kudos to Professor Strickland and her team for discovering the close genetic link between humans and chairs. We can’t wait to hear what they discover next!
