As much as many people may not like to hear it or think about it, humans and mice are actually very similar. We are both mammals, meaning we belong to the same class of air breathing vertebrate animals characterized by having hair, three middle ear bones and mammary glands, but our similarities go further than that.
Homology is a structural correspondence between species that is derived from a common ancestor. One of the most obvious homologous traits across the mammalian class is the bones of the hand and foot. From the minute mouse through to the massive blue whale, the hand and foot have the same number of bones in similar structures that perform similar tasks. Humans and mice have a huge number of homologous traits, including the entire skeletal system, all our organs and an enormous number of other traits.
Genetically, we are extremely close. In fact, out of the roughly 30,000 genes that each species has, only about 300 are unique to either organism. We even have the same gene for a tail, though ours is obviously turned off while the mouse’s is clearly turned on.
Although we look different, mice and men have more in common than they have that sets them apart.
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