96% of his DNA

"So, did you hear they finally cloned a human? But they based it on Adolph Hitler! It's supposed to share 96% of its DNA with him!"

"96%? Really?"

"Yeah! It's going to be the Boys from Brazil, but in real life!"

"96%. Hum. Let me check that." He starts googling. "Hey, do they have any photos of this baby?"

"No ... what would you expect to see?"

"Orange hair, maybe?"

"Hitler's hair wasn't orange. Wait ... are you saying ... oh my god .. that they cloned Donald Trump?"

"Uhhh ..."

"But how could you conclude just from 96% that it was Donald Trump?"

"No, no, not Donald Trump. He's just plain Scottish and German, very run-of-the-mill. I'm thinking of a different type of orange hair."

"What, then?"

"All humans share 99.9% of their DNA. 99.6% if you pick a pair out outliers, like a Khoi bushman and an Australian aborigine. If you're looking at something that shares 96% of its DNA with a specific human, it's not going to be human. Or even a chimp. It's going to be an orangutan."


This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "You are the first successful human born by cloning in the world. The bad part is, you share 96 percent of your DNA with one of the greatest dictators in history.".


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