Aren't really into a good gossipy sex scandal, but that, in fact, my friends, is not true at all

They love to talk about sex

Especially when it's the sex lives of our prehistoric ancestors

So, scientists are currently gossiping up a storm about the fact that our early ancestors,

The first homo sapiens, may have interbred with some other species

Which is weird

It's long been accepted by the scientific community that homosapiens, like me

And probably you

Originated in Africa around 200,000 years ago

As far as we can tell, they stayed there for about 140,000 years,

Until they started to get frisky and struck out into the unknown

One of the things that those adventurous humans discovered out there in the wide world

Was an older, more primitive, bigger-boned, species of great ape that we call Neanderthal

You may call them NeanderTHals but we, and the scientific community, call them NeanderThals

Because that's what they called themselves

Actually, it's because that's what the cave where their first fossils were found is called

It was NeanderThal. Not NeanderTHal.

It's just how they spell it

Neanderthals are, of course, related to humans, but their evolutionary lines had split about 350,000 years before

But, just because Neanderthals and humans were not the same species,

Did that prevent them from getting it on?

No

And it appears that we were similar enough species that we were actually able to create viable offspring

Studies have shown that, despite the fact that Neanderthals went extinct about 40,000 years ago

They live on

In us

According to this research, between one and 4 percent of human DNA is actually Neanderthal DNA

So, you might as well unstitch your family crest from your smoking jacket

But, Neanderthals might, actually, not be the only ancient hominids that humankind had intimate relations with

The recently discovered Denisovans,

Which probably shared more in common with Neanderthals than with humans

Are showing up in the genome of people all over southeast Asia

So, it turns out that we had a lot more choices of people

Or, you know, sort-of people

To mate with back in the olden days

But, we're not done messing with your conception of what humanity is yet,

Because turns out that some of your ancestors may, in fact, have had sexy times with gorillas

The reason they think this is not to do with our genome, it's to do with the genome of lice

And, stick with me, because yeah

I bet you're probably clicking away from the video right now

So, most species of mammals have one species of lice that's specific to them

It lives on them and only them, but all over them

Now, humans are a little different

Because we have isolated pockets of hair

We actually have two species of lice

We have head lice and we have pubic lice

And that's different from every other mammals' lice

But, our pubic lice?

Is very, very, surprisingly and upsettingly similar to the species that lives on gorillas

No!

God, no!

Why did we even look into this?

But, even if our ancestors were having sex with the ancestors of gorillas

Which, hopefully, they weren't

I'm still keeping that as a possibility in my mind

It probably was happening like 3.3 million years ago

So, you probably don't have to run straight to the shower and scrub your skin off with a pumice stone

At the moment

But, still, dang!

Australopithecus

You dirty dog

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Transcribed by Ethan M.