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How are chimpanzees and bonobos more closely related to humans than to gorillas?

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Illustration comparing the body plans of representative anthropoids, showing a male western lowland gorilla, a male human, a male bonobo, a female Bornean orangutan, and male and female northern white-cheeked gibbons, all labeled and depicted to scale. — primate Representative apes (superfamily Hominoidea).

Chimpanzees and bonobos are more closely related to humans than to gorillas because of their shared evolutionary history and genetic proximity. While all these species are great apes belonging to the family Hominidae, scientific evidence indicates that the lineage leading to humans diverged from the lineage containing chimpanzees and bonobos more recently than it diverged from the lineage leading to gorillas.12

Genetic analysis reveals that humans and chimpanzees share at least 98 percent of their genomes, reflecting a common ancestry that persisted long after the split from the gorilla lineage. Taxonomically, this closer relationship is often reflected by grouping humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos within the same subfamily or tribe, whereas gorillas are placed in a distinct tribe, Gorillini. Consequently, chimpanzees and bonobos are considered humanity's closest living relatives.3145