Shapes of Trees

This movie shows you a series of trees that all contain identical information about relatedness among primate species.

A video of the phylogenetic tree of the orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo, and human is shown with branch points swiveling, or rotating on their axes. The rotation of the branch points does not change the structure or information represented in the phylogenetic tree.

Evolutionary relationships are conveyed by how the branches are arranged and connected to one another. In other words, a tree can be thought of as a mobile that can rotate around each node.