The body shapes of humans   and chimpanzees were compared quantitatively by criteria chosen for their   capacity to discriminate well among the body shapes of frogs. By these   criteria, the difference in body shape between humans and chimpanzees was   found to be greater than that between the most dissimilar pairs of frogs examined——that is, frogs classified in separate taxonomic suborders. Even though   the morphological difference between the two primates is large by frog   standards, the biochemical differences between the structural genes of these   two species are small. The results of this study give quantitative support to   the proposal that morphological evolution and biochemical evolution in   structural genes can proceed at independent rates.

使用能够很好地区分不同蛙类物种的形态指标，来比较人类和黑猩猩的外形。根据这些标准，人类和黑猩猩的体形差异大于被检测的最不相似的蛙类（不同亚目）之间的差异。尽管按照蛙类的标准，两种灵长类动物的形态差异很大，但它们的结构基因之间的生化差异却很小。本研究的量化结果支持结构基因进化的形态进化可以不同速率进行的观点。