Uncle Remus probably knew it all along. Br'er Rabbit is more closely related to humans than most people suspected. If not brother, maybe Cousin Rabbit.
Although rabbits and hares have long been classified as close relatives of rodents (mice, rats, squirrels), a new study has concluded that the long-eared hoppers are really more closely related to primates, the mammalian order that includes monkeys, apes and humans.
Rabbits and hares have long been classified in the order Lagomorpha. But because they share so many anatomical features with rodents, zoologists have regarded Lagomorpha and the order Rodentia as sister groups in a superorder called Glires.
The new findings, published in the Jan. 25 issue of Nature by Dan Graur, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University, and colleagues at Claude Bernard University in Lyon, France, are based on comparisons of the detailed structures of 88 proteins common to all mammals. Although the function of each protein is the same in all species, the molecules' structures can vary slightly as a result of subtle mutations. The longer since two groups shared a common ancestor, the more genetic differences are accumulated in their proteins.
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The results showed overwhelmingly that rabbits are more like primates as a whole than like rodents, and very much more like tree shrews (order Scandentia), a group that is thought to have given rise to the primates.
Graur and colleagues attribute the anatomical similarities between rabbits and rodents to their both having descended from a common mammalian ancestor that possessed those traits, which were lost in some lineages and retained in others.
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