https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5447151/human-chimp-hybrid-born-florida-lab-killed-humanzee/
A HUMAN-chimpanzee hybrid was born in a Florida lab 100 years ago before being killed by panicked doctors, claims a renowned scientist.
Evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup coined the term “humanzee” which refers to a human-chimp crossbreed – a scientifically possible hybridisation which was attempted throughout the 20th century.
Gallup, who developed the famous mirror “self-recognition” test which proved primates could acknowledge their own reflection, claims his former university professor told him that a humanzee baby was born at a research facility where he used to work.
Speaking to The Sun Online, he said: “One of the most interesting cases involved an attempt which was made back in the 1920s in what was the first primate research centre established in the US in Orange Park, Florida.
“They inseminated a female chimpanzee with human semen from an undisclosed donor and claimed not only that pregnancy occurred but the pregnancy went full term and resulted in a live birth.
“But in the matter of days, or a few weeks, they began to consider the moral and ethical considerations and the infant was euthanised.”
Gallup said the professor worked at Yerkes before the research centre moved to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia in 1930.
He added: “He told me the rumour was true. And he was a credible scientist in his own right.”
Camels and llamas split sometime in the Miocene, probably the early Miocene. So, more than ten million years ago. Yet hybrids are possible, although only a small fraction of attempts have succeeded.
So I’m saying there’s a chance.
I heard this story from Gordon Gallup a long time ago.
West Hunter 
Is it really as easy as just buying some chimps and continually inseminating them?
Would humanzees likely be able to produce further viable offspring?
The person who did that would be one of the top scientists of all time and possibly the creator of the second most intelligent species on earth. Guaranteed fame and fortune. Imagine the book advance for that story!
The real question is, why is no one doing this?
Because it’s seriously sick and disgusting. You’d be remembered a lot more like Charles Manson and a lot less like Albert Einstein.
Hey, don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.
Rather, you’d be dismembered.
Charles Manson had a harem of attractive young women.
Einstein got a lover who was assigned to him by the KGB…
“Is it really as easy as just buying some chimps and continually inseminating them?
Would humanzees likely be able to produce further viable offspring?”
Even assuming the story is true, there is a good chance the humanzee might die quickly.
“The real question is, why is no one doing this?”
The real question is, why is no one cloning smart humans. The chinese may have started creating some CRISPR babies if recent reports are credible, huge potential there.
Costs. Such a hybrid would be infertile. Maybe if you make like n=10^9 tries you’d establish a viable species. You’d have more chance of winning any lotteries than this.
And imbeciles you create have no real use.
The could probably vote in Chicago.
Let’s play Name That Party
They already do.
But corpses come cheaper.
Yes.
Sounds like a money making reality TV show to me. The baby abomination would still be kinda cute. 1 part cute and 19 parts disturbing and as it grew up the cute fraction would go away.
Baby chimp- very cute, baby human- very cute , baby humanzee- you can’t take your eyes off the disturbing abomination. You don’t even have to go to the far fetched effort to try. Movies don’t even employ baby chimps anymore, it’s all done through computer animation. The history channel is chock full of bullshit shows. Giant extinct sharks munching people up like cookies, loons explaining aliens building pyramids, now this would be some must see TV for the fools who eat that stuff up. “I am not an abomination, I’m Fred,” is the name of the show. Poor little plug ugly Fred is raised by his loving parents somewhere in an unspecified part of the world. Mom home schools the cute little guy but he grows up to be really mean and nasty. It’s bad television after all, we have to put some tension and drama into the show.
Chimpanzees are monsters. They’re cute went they are young but they grow up and eat the face of their owners. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3DeJjHAz8I) Better get a lion cub. They grow up to be Elsa of “Born Free”.
Our ruling class has an insatiable appetite for imbeciles. They can’t get enough of them.
“The real question is, why is no one doing this?”
Nobody knows it’s possible. It sounds like the plot of a bad science fiction movie. I guess this is the answer, or one of the answers, to the question raised in the last post.
What would be the point, except pure scientific curiosity? Not worth being know as the new Joseph Mengele or Shiro Ishii.
“Not worth being know as the new Joseph Mengele or Shiro Ishii.”
Some disagree(NSFW warning):
https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/High_Score
No comparison. Mass shooters are usually failures with nothing to lose, going alone. For the suggested Dr. Moreau style research projects, you would need lots of money and whole institute or other organization to going along. Not going to happen.
Even China sees genetically engineering children as too bad PR and is stamping down. Forget about cross-breeding man and ape.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/27/china-orders-inquiry-into-worlds-first-gene-edited-babies
It sounds like an urban legend. No verifiable details…happened to a friend of a friend…I’m surprised it doesn’t end with a guy with a hook for a hand saying “humans can lick too”.
The Russians tried this at one point. Human sperm and chimp eggs didn’t work. They were going to try orangutan sperm and human eggs, and then the scientist ended up in a gulag. A lot of Soviet science experiments terminated in just that fashion.
I doubt humangutans are possible. Orangutans branched off earlier, and have more genetic disparity. A few years ago there was a story about a zookeeper impregnating an orangutan, but it proved to be a hoax.
I agree, going by the tone of the article it sounded pretty dubious.
Also, here’s an article about a young female orangutan rescued from a brothel where it was being raped. No mention of pregnancy.
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/shocking-story-sex-slave-orangutan-and-her-rescue/
“No mention of pregnancy.”
Clearly they used protection, what do you think they are? fucking animals?
I lol’d
Not to disagree with the main point, but she was only 6-7 years old. That would be at the very earliest possible age of sexual maturation for orangutans, with most not becoming pregnant until well into their teens. That, in combination with the amount of stress she was under, would make it very surprising if she became pregnant even if being repeatedly raped by other orangutans.
Yeah, I read about that too. What a world.
The orangutan was 7 years old, and they attain sexual maturity at about 14 (like we do), so I assume pregnancy wasn’t an issue.
“They were going to try orangutan sperm and human eggs, and then the scientist ended up in a gulag.”
Well, then at least some good came out of the Gulag, then.
“I doubt humangutans are possible: what a pity, it’s a wonderful word.
Yes of course you are most certainly right – it’s a hoax. But it won’t always be a hoax. Someone will do it if only so as to get on television. We are mastering the biological building blocks of our bodies. Odd people are doing odd things.
There’s a guy who has given himself horns and has tatooed scales over all his skin. In a few years some doctor will graft a human to a horse because he had a customer/patient who wanted to be a centaur. Both will get on TV.
Camels and llamas have the same number of chromosomes. Humanzee would be more like mule – problems with meiosis because of the incomplete chromosome pairing.
It definitely can be done. Some even teach in my university.
In crossbreeds it matters which species is the mother and which is the father. Maybe this particular crossbreed would work better using a human egg and chimp sperm. The embryo could be implanted in a female chimp — or who knows, maybe you could find human volunteers for the experiment, women who wanted to be (in)famous. There could be a reality show — Real Chimpmoms of the Florida Labs or something. It could be on The Discovery Channel! (Of course with the Discovery Channel you wouldn’t actually need the “Real” part…).
Also, Greg, you say you heard about this from Gallop directly? What were the circumstances of the conversation? Did you get any details that weren’t in the link?
He’s quoting the article he give the link to.
He’s not saying he heard it himself. The text is in italics because he’s quoting it.
I heard it from Gallup directly. Same story as in the press interview. A few more details in the press interview.
You should turn off your italics, then …
”They inseminated a female chimpanzee with human semen from an undisclosed donor and claimed not only that pregnancy occurred but the pregnancy went full term and resulted in a live birth.
”But in the matter of days, or a few weeks, they began to consider the moral and ethical considerations and the infant was euthanised.”
Ethical dilemma solved. I mean, he/she/it probably gave consent and all
One ethical dilemma solved…. by murdering a person(?) a few weeks old!
I’d rather someone cloned a Neanderthal or a Denisovan instead. At least we could learn something about ourselves from such a being. He might even – gasp! – be smarter than us, since the cranial capacity of Neanderthals was, on average, higher than ours (1600 cm^3).
Doesn’t seem likely. They failed the IQ test that really mattered.
I would generally agree but….if they really failed then why all living Eurasians have some Neanderthal DNA? To put it differently, why none of the “pure bred version” of HS left any surviving offspring in Eurasia? It seems that only HS/N hybrids made it till now. Yes, I know, purifying selection still going on but anyway, no surviving HS without some Neanderthal genes, even a single one? HS must have failed in Eurasia. Only the hybridized versions survived. By this I mean if N failed then HS failed too. Both beaten by the hybrids. Basal Eurasians did not have any Neanderthal DNA. They made it In Eurasia for some thousands of years. Anybody heard of them recently?
Very good point.
They 95% failed, A for effort I guess?.
Or surviving is not an IQ test.
What on earth makes you think it was an IQ test they failed? Maybe it was an immune system test.
The Sun.
On the other hand, apparently Dr. Cochran lends some credence to the story.
That’s a draw.
The novel Les Animaux dénaturés (1952) by Vercors turned on the status of “Tropis”, aspecies of not-quite-human primates discovered in the interior of New Guinea. When a businessman seeks to use Tropis as slave labor, a scientist impregnates a female Tropi with his own sperm, then euthanizes the resulting child. This raises the question of whether he committed murder, and thus of the status of the Tropis.
“If non-Nordics are more closely allied to monkeys and apes than to Nordics, why is it possible for them to mate with Nordics and not with apes?” wrote German professor Herman Rauch from Berlin in 1923. “The answer is this: it has not been proven that non-Nordics cannot mate with apes.”
Don’t we already have enough trouble with low IQ, semi-feral humans? Why create a new subspecies with even lower IQ and even lower capacity for civility?
On the other hand, there could be stuff we could use in the chimp genome, with technologies like CRISPR. Perhaps something related to the immune system. Someday when we know a lot more.
But, Dr. Cochran, why stopping at the obvious? What about dogs? With CRISP everything seems possible, even if not right now. Some anthropologists believe there has been convergent evolution between humans and dogs, or more precisely wolfs in Eurasia anyway. HS admired wolf’s qualities he encountered – group loyalty, courage, self-discipline, following the leadership and strict social order, hunt-smart and this admiration led Eurasian HS to self-selection in this direction; as for the wolfs, this convergens led them to higher emotionality and habituation of the vocal expression of their feelings and of course ability for a life-time play (juvenilization?). So would not it be nice to finish the job and CRISP them into another sentient species, lending them few human genes. Then what about bears? Cows? Would not it be nice, this entire sentient crowd, all with their unique views, qualities and habits? Now, that’s diversity. Human Chimps – too boring. Another humanoid. Now, talking cows and sentient bears would be a real twist in the narration. Big step. HS spreading light or whatever.
I don’t believe this, human chromosome 2 is a fusion of 2 chimp chromosomes. Ligate 2 chimp chromosomes together and immuno-supress the chimp mother, then we’re talking.
Chimps are too common, too many in private hands (ripping off their owner’s hands). If it were readily possible, it’d probably have happened and made the news by now.
If it’s like the camel-llama mating, you’d have to try many times for each success.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7829159/the-horrifying-story-of-a-prostitute-orangutan-who-was-chained-to-a-bed-shaved-daily-and-forced-to-perform-sex-acts-on-men-twice-her-size/
Godspeed, Indonesia!
Finally, someone has pointed out the obvious flaw
Not obvious to me. Mitotic metaphase involves chromosomes lining up with their own copies, not the homologous chromosome from the other parent. You and the other guy are thinking of meiotic metaphase I.
Certainly the hybrid shouldn’t be fertile, but that doesn’t speak to its existence.
Donkeys and horses have different karyotypes https://rep.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/rep/4/3/jrf_4_3_009.xml
There used to be stories floating around west central Africa of the “koolakomba,” an ape intermediate between chimpanzee and gorilla. Most likely this is pure invention, like unicorns or leprechauns. Possibly people were just seeing really big chimps. Less likely is that there’s an undiscovered new species of ape around. Or maybe (the speculation goes) we’re seeing chimp-gorilla hybrids.
A successful chimp/gorilla hybrid might or might not tell us whether a chimp/human hybrid is possible.The chimp/gorilla split is older than the chimp/human split. On the other hand there’s more morphological divergence between chimp/human than between chimp/gorilla. Is there a moral objection to trying to hybridize chimps and gorillas, via artificial insemination? (Probably) Would we learn anything interesting from the experiment? (Probably)
Also: David Barash thinks it would be really great to create to try and produce chimp-human hybrids, because success would piss off creationists. “Such a development could well be a real mind expander and paradigm buster.”
http://nautil.us/issue/58/self/its-time-to-make-human_chimp-hybrids
Hybrids are more positive than hardly anyone knows.
Of course you don’t need the same number of chromosomes:
“I should, perhaps, also mention that differences in parental chromosome counts, even rather large ones, do not preclude the production of fertile hybrids. While differences of this sort do bode ill for the fertility of the resulting progeny, it is only a rule of thumb. For example, female geeps, the products of hybridization between sheep (2n=54) and goats (2n=60), can produce offspring in backcrosses. Likewise, female zeedonks (Burchell’s Zebra, 2n=44 x Ass, 2n=62) have also been fertile in backcrosses. There are many other examples of this sort among mammalian hybrids. Therefore, such differences between the parents in a cross do not in any way guarantee an absolute sterility in the hybrid offspring.”
Just think of it as a post-birth abortion and all the ethical issues go away.
They didn’t think that of the ethics of it during the X months of pregnancy? They didn’t think to conduct an autopsy? Urban legend.
“But in the matter of days, or a few weeks, they began to consider the moral and ethical considerations and the infant was euthanised.”
Interesting question: would this be considered homicide?
They could give you half a life sentence.
This would be for the court to decide.
Imagine Florida Monkey Trial, the real trial of the century, stunning the whole globe and giving world wide publicity for evolutionary science. What opportunity wasted;-(
Greg, did you know that your Uncle Charlie was a roommate at Yale with the late Ted Bessell, who starred in the TV series “Me and the Chimp?” The series, from the creators of HAPPY DAYS and LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY, was about a dentist who lives with his wife, two children, and a chimp washout from the space program named Buttons. Reading your post – I realized with a shock that Buttons may have been a child of his from a previous relationship or an extramarital affair. Thinking about it, Iggy and Squiggy on LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY also resembled chimps.
Didn’t he play football at Yale?
Leonard Bailey did a baboon heart transplant on an infant in 1984. The transplant worked for 18 days. Donors are extremely hard to find for infant transplants, At one time there was interest in using anencephalics as donors but the ethical issues killed that idea. No pun intended.