According to researchers from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, bonobo's may have a precursor behaviour of saying no by shaking their heads, like us humans do. Bonobos at Leipzig Zoo and chimps at Arnhem Zoo have been filmed shaking their heads to infants so as to transmit their disapproval: to get infants to stop playing with their food, to keep them from straying or to alert them when they're in a bad mood and do not want to be disturbed.

In 2007 a study was made on chimpanzees and bonobos, in order to learn about their gestures. This study showed that primates are more versatile with hand and foot gestures than with facial expressions, but are very capable of communicating their feelings/desires: claiming for food with their hands open and with a teeth face, hugging, touching... Researches suggested humans were communicating with sign language long before speaking and that this is the reason why these gestures seem so familiar.

Researcher de Waal about the ape's laughs: "It is low-pitched compared to human laughter, but the facial expression and the waxing and waning of the laughing sounds are eerily human to the point that those of us familiar with these vocalizations cannot stop ourselves from laughing, too." Nevertheless, our laughters are not entirely the same. Humans hoot and holler on exhale; chimps can do that, but they also laugh with an alternating flow of air in and out, being able to breathe while laughing.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, found that monkeys, like humans, can recognize faces due to the small differences we have in them which contribute to an individual appearance. Apparently, we are only able to do that when we are accustomed to the faces we are looking at. So, we are able to detect small changes in human faces but not monkey faces, and the same happens to monkeys, but just the other way around. Isn't that crazy??!

Rhesus monkeys,like humans,form hierarchies and get stressed due to that social pressure. Because of the stress caused,lower-ranked monkeys eat less than the high-ranked. Scientists tested this stress-comfort-food link by giving both dominant and subordinate females access to banana-flavored pellets of low-fat and high-fat diets. They saw that lower-ranked monkeys would eat in excess of high-fat diet, the same as in the American way of life, but not the high-ranked. That food is comfort food.

"The tool kits of most chimpanzee populations consist of about 20 types of tools, which are used for various functions in daily life, including subsistence, sociality, sex, and self-maintenance," primatologist William C. McGrew wrote in an essay in the Apr. 30, 2010, issue of the journal Science.

Everybody knows that humans are evolutionarily close to other great apes, but how close are we really? We have lost our body hair, our brains have gotten bigger... but our genomes are still about 97 PERCENT THE SAME as other great apes!