Abstract
HUMAN beings can be divided into two groups according as they experience a bitter taste or not with dilute solutions of phenylthiocarbamide, and the proportion of ‘non-tasters’ to ‘tasters’ is regularly 25–30 per cent.’ Tests by R. A. Fisher, E. B. Ford, and J. Huxley on manliko apes in zoological collections show that some of them cannot taste phenylthiocarbamide. The proportion of non-tasters in the chimpanzee agrees with that in man. It appears that in the ancestries both of man and of the apes a balance of selective forces must have maintained the gene ratio at a nearly constant value.
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Points from Foregoing Letters. Nature 144, 755 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144755a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144755a0