98% chimp

I've seen a number of people wearing 98% chimp T-shirts and I'm fascinated to ask them why they wear them.

Perhaps you've seen them? Perhaps you wear one?

If you've never heard of them, here's how one website promotes their shirts …

YCMV (Your Chimpanzeeness May Vary)

Face it. You knew from the first time you climbed on the monkey bars that you were 98% Chimp. You could swing, screech, eat bananas … really all you needed were opposable toes and some additional body hair to make the picture complete. In the 1970s, studies emerged comparing promising sequences of aligned human and chimpanzee DNA. The divergences were striking in their minimalism – the differences due to base substitution came back under 2%. Aha. There's that opposable toe.

Even today, with new technology and the entire chimpanzee genome mapped, the numbers run about the same. Unless you count indels. Which we don't. Don't get us wrong. We like indels. Heck. Just the way they put the word together makes us all misty for 'modem'. Indels, aka insertions and deletions of nucleotides in a protein sequence, make up an additional estimated 3% of differences between human and chimp genetics. They're common in non-coding regions of the DNA, bits where we're not quite sure what the DNA is doing, other than slacking off. So we decided not to count it on our shirt. If it can't account for its time, we're not putting it on the payroll.

100% cotton, black T-shirt proudly proclaims '98% Chimp'.

Cute. But why wear one?

Perhaps I'm over-thinking this, but for me these T-shirts raise questions about human and animal rights, and about personal accountability.

When it comes to human and animal rights – it is the humans who are at various times discussing them, abusing them, and upholding them. It is the humans who are held accountable. Chimps have been, and will likely continue to be, silent on the issue of rights.

Chimps don't get charged with war crimes, even though tribes of chimps have been observed at war with each other. Chimps can't be charged with abusing chimps, but humans, on the other hand, can and should be charged for abuse of any chimps in their care. We want to hold humans accountable for their actions, but we don't apply the same standards to chimps.

Some claim that our desire for human rights and our sense of personal accountability can be explained by our DNA. If that's the case, since we are 98% chimp, all I can say is "what a difference 2% makes!".

So why do people wear these T-shirts?

Perhaps the logic is "chimps are cute and funny" so wearing this T-shirt is cute or funny. Perhaps it's merely to state a scientific observation. Perhaps it's to annoy religious folks, but if that's the case I'd have to say that personally I'm more intrigued than annoyed.

But what if I wear one in an attempt to excuse my moral failings by saying "Oh well, what do you expect, I'm 98% chimp"? That idea's just dangerous.

The Bible talks about humans being made 'in the image of God' and about 'sin', recognising that we are moral creatures with moral failings and we are accountable to God for them. So as a Christian I can reconcile being both 98% chimp and at the same time being a moral agent.

I hope people don't think that being 98% chimp means humans are not accountable for their moral failings.

Because that thought makes me so angry, I could screech.