Can we have children with chimpanzees? A certain doctor's unusual experiment.How to Make A Humanzee???

There are many interspecific hybrids in the world. A mule of a male donkey and female horse hybrid, a liger that is a mixed race of male lion and female tiger, and a zebraid that is a half of a zebra and horse. So can humans create hybrids with monkeys and chimpanzees that have DNA close to themselves? There was a Soviet (Russian) scientist who challenged this question that everyone once considered. Its name is Ilya Ivanov. He injected his sperm into a number of monkeys, including chimpanzees and orangutans, in the 1920s, and attempted to fertilize monkey semen to volunteer women. What is the result of the abnormal mating experiment?


Can chimpanzees and humans cross?


Hank Greene : There are many different hybrids. Mules, ligers, Zebroids, Beefalo, and the grawler bears that have been controversial these days.

But if anything, I think humans are at a different level. We're humans, and we don't even have a species close to us. How do you interbreed with something? Yeah!

But can you hear me It has already been done. And some say it may happen again.

It's already happened because we all have a little Neanderthal, and as I said at the last SciShow, the average European is 1-4% Neanderthal.

So, in fact, we're all heterogeneous hybrids. Its DNA is so deeply infiltrated into our seeds that it's basically part of what makes us human.

But the more terrifying and intriguing question to ask is, "Will it happen again?"


A lot of people have asked this question, and some are getting urged to clarify whether it is possible to crossbreed humans with their closest genetic relative, chimpanzees. .

Now, before we go any further, let's clarify SciShow's public position, hopefully this is a terrible idea for humanity.

It involves the creation of a perceptually capable organism that is severely unmoral, that is, it has the potential to have many genetic disorders and becomes the only member of his or her species. It's no good and wrong to do it for you, it's no longer a devil's job.

But it's still attractive to discuss, unless you really think about doing it. So first, is it possible?

Now, humans and chimpanzees share a lot of DNA. They have one more set of chromosomes than humans, but different numbers of chromosomes is not an absolute barrier to crossbreeding. In fact, some individuals of that species have different numbers of chromosomes, and they are doing well. This is known as chromosomal polymorphism.

In fact, in 2010, it was discovered that a Chinese man with perfectly normal fertility had only 22 chromosomes.

After all, the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees is about the same as the genetic difference between horses and zebras. Crossing of zebras and horses is always done.


Human male x female chimpanzee and manpansy

In short, in terms of terminology, when geneticists make mashups of these names, they're actually doing what they're doing with hybrid animals, but they put their father first in the hybrid, Put your mother next. So if it's a male chimpanzee and a human woman, it's a "Tuman", and if it's a human male and a female chimpanzee, it's a "Humanji" or a "Manpansy".

Yes, manpansy.

In 2006, after the last common ancestry of humans and chimpanzees that lived between 5 and 7 million years ago, there were 1.2 million years of interbreeding between humans and chimpanzee races. A study on genes showed.

That's not surprising, because the races were very similar and lived in similar places, but paleanthropologists might have been a little shocked when the news was published .

But there's no evidence of a recent human-chimpanzee hybrid, not because I haven't tried it.


Scientists injected their sperm into monkeys

In the 1920s, the Soviet biologist Ilya Ivanov injected his sperm into a number of monkeys, including chimpanzees and orangutans.

Even worse, he tried to fertilize monkey semen to human volunteers.

The good news is that he failed. The bad news is that the failure was because his primate subjects had all died, presumably from severe abuse.

Ivanov's study did not result in any kind of pregnancy, and eventually his study was subject to in-depth investigation, and in some ways, of course, the government was so angry that he expelled him to Kazakhstan, and he Years later he died there.

That ridiculous research is to the extent that we can know for sure whether hybrids between humans and chimpanzees are possible. And fortunately, it's the biggest thing we'll definitely know in the future.

Whether we can do that or not, we can all agree that we shouldn't do it.