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Though it seems like a taboo subject to most of the general public, the idea behind the hybridization of a human and a chimpanzee isn’t that crazy. His existence as a true chimp was eventually proven. Wikimedia Commons A chimp named “Oliver” who was long believed to be a humanzee. The humanzee infant was then apparently euthanized. The afterglow of their achievement had begun to wear off, and the ethical implications became too much for them. However, shortly thereafter the scientists panicked. He claimed his former professor told him of the humanzee baby, which was born to a female chimp using human sperm.
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In early 2018, Gordon Gallup, an evolutionary psychologist, claimed that the United States created a humanzee in a lab in Orange Park, Fla.
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As scientists were sent off to perform farm labor, the humanzee experiment fell by the wayside and the pregnant chimp died from neglect.Īccording to the Chicago Tribune, Li Guong of the genetics research bureau at the Chinese Academy of Science not only confirmed the existence of the experiments but confirmed that they had been halted by the revolution and that plans existed to resume them.
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Though he claimed the insemination was successful, the experiment was cut short due to the Cultural Revolution. Yongxiang claimed that he was part of a 1967 experiment, that resulted in a female chimpanzee being impregnated with human sperm. However, there have been a few attempts.Īccording to Ji Yongxiang, the head of a hospital in Shengyang, China, the People’s Republic of China was experimenting with artificial insemination to create a humanzee. Though several scientists and organizations have attempted, there have been no scientifically verified specimens of a humanzee created to date. Two years later, Ivanov died from a stroke, but his strange idea would live on. It seemed that not everyone thought his experiments were as groundbreaking as he did, and in 1930 he was arrested and exiled. Ultimately, the experiments were halted due to the death of his last chimp.ĭue to the controversial nature of his experiments, Ivanov eventually came under scrutiny from the veterinary institute where he worked. Then he tried a more controversial method by introducing chimpanzee sperm to human females. First, he worked with human sperm and female chimpanzees, though he ultimately failed to create a sustainable pregnancy. Then, finally, he was ready.īeginning in the mid 1920s, Ivanov started carrying out his experiments. For the next 10 years, he formulated plans and researched artificial insemination to learn if it was even possible. To his surprise, several of the scientists supported him and encouraged him to go forward with his plans. When Ivanov presented his idea, he never assumed that it would gain the traction it did. They called it, the “humanzee.” The Early Stages He called his project a human-ape hybrid, but there would soon be a term coined for this kind of hybrid, as the horrifying concept was picked up by experimental biologists across the globe. Using the sperm of a human and the body of a chimp, he would birth a new species, possibly the missing link between humans and apes. He hypothesized the possibility of creating a mammalian hybrid unlike anything the world had ever seen before. In 1910, Soviet biologist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov presented a most controversial idea to the World Congress of Zoologists. Wikimedia Commons Could a “humanzee” actually come from combining humans and chimpanzees?
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