Abstract

The great ape families are the species most closely related to our own, comprising chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. They live exclusively in tropical rainforests in Central Africa and the islands of Southeast Asia. Due to their close evolutionary relationship with humans, great apes share many cognitive, physiological, and morphological similarities with humans. The members of the great ape fam-ily make obvious models to facilitate the further understand-ing about humans ’ biology and history. This review will discuss how the recent addition of genome-wide data from great apes has furthered humans ’ understanding of these spe-cies and humanity, especially in the realm of evolutionary genetics. Key Words: conservation genetics; demography; evolution; great apes; natural selection; population size