|
|
Re: offspring, ape and man.
Paul Smith (paul.smith@tip.nl)
Tue, 16 Jul 1996 16:11:26 GMT
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. wrote:
>
> tdewater@aol.com (Tdewater) wrote:
> >
> > Is it possiable to mate an ape and a human and have an offspring ? If yes
> > has it been done and what was the child like ? If one has any data on
> > this please send it to Tdewater2aol.com and comment here.
I wouldn't lose much sleep over this. I don't know about bonobos but common chimpanzees
have a different number of autosome pairs from humans. This makes little difference to
genetic distance because the difference is either due to fusion or duplication (I forget
which) since the LCA, but it would play merry hell with meiosis, even assuming that a
hybrid would be viable. Result: gametes without a viable set of chromosomes and no
offspring from the hybrid. A similar chromosome mis-match keeps mules sterile despite
the genetic similarity of the parent species.
The result would be that if, say, a deranged British Member of Parliament in a marginal
constituency had the idea of breeding easily-trained chimp-human hybrids to vote for
him, he would have to father them all himself rather than relying on them to breed with
each other. This would do little for his credibility with his existing fully-human
constituents as, for one thing, all this miscongenitation with female chimps would keep
him too busy to serve on parliamentary committees, and, secondly, it might be hard for
his constituents to take him seriously after word got out, even in Bournemouth.
Groetjes,
Paul Smith.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Paul Smith & Bea Hemmen, De Gildekamp 21-47, 6545KE,
Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Tel: 024-3782438, E-mail: paul.smith@tip.nl
"God save us from our naughtiness" 16th C. English Prayer
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|