Humans and the other apes share an ancestor, which means that if you follow the branches of the generations of parents of humans and other apes back far enough, you come to the same animal (our shared ancestor). Humans are more like chimpanzees and bonobos than they are like the other apes, so they are closer on the Tree of Life. The three species–humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos–share an ancestor. Humans became a different species from bonobos and chimpanzees 5–7 million years ago. Bonobos and chimpanzees continued to become what they now are even after humans branched off from them. Chimpanzees and bonobos have also changed over millions of years, but in their own ways.
We can study the behavior of animals that are alive now in order to learn about the likely behavior of their ancestors. If all of the species in a branch of the tree of life can learn a skill, they probably inherited that skill from their shared ancestor. If only one species in a branch can learn a skill, the shared ancestor probably was not able to learn that skill.

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