# Are cats the newest large animal on Earth? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 7, 2001, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053 "2001-03-07T03:54:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Badtz\_Maru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e36b37/32.png) [@Badtz\_Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badtz_Maru)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053/21 "2001-03-08T05:58:00Z")
I hit **Submit Reply** too early. I was wondering if anybody else had heard anything like that, I did a search on google but I can’t seem to hit the right combination of words, ‘Jane Goodall Murder Gorilla Sex’ gets an odd mix of sites, nothing about this story I heard (and don’t necessarily believe true, but think possible). ---
**Author:** ![domina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/96bed5/32.png) [@domina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/domina)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053/22 "2001-03-08T06:13:15Z")
Duck Duck Goose, in the case of pit vipers and bears you’re talking about groups of animals rather than species. Do you know how old the species within these groups are? Badtzu Maru, I think you’re confusing Jane Goodall with Diane Fossey. Fossey was murdered, Goodall is (I think) still alive. Also, Fossey was the one who studied gorillas (Goodall studies chimps). ---
**Author:** ![domina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/96bed5/32.png) [@domina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/domina)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053/23 "2001-03-08T06:14:47Z")
Sorry, that’s spelled **Dian** Fossey. ---
**Author:** ![Badtz\_Maru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e36b37/32.png) [@Badtz\_Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badtz_Maru)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053/24 "2001-03-08T06:58:15Z")
Yes, I was wrong. I always get them mixed up. Sorry Jane! I did a google search for Jane Goodall Murder first, but didn’t really look at the pages that came up, just their descriptions, and one of them kinda did look like it said she was murdered by Rwandans, but it was because it was the way the segment of the sentence was reported on the summary page. ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053/25 "2001-03-08T14:01:52Z")
And you mixed them up again, in the very next sentence after you said “Sorry Jane!” **Dian Fossey** studied gorillas. **Dian Fossey** was murdered in the 80s. Jane Goodall, still very much alive, studies chimpanzees. Whether or not **Fossey** was doing the wild thing with the wild things, it’s most likely she was killed for making life so hard for the gorilla poachers. ---
**Author:** ![Sigene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053/26 "2001-03-08T14:54:33Z")
Jeez! [http://www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/evolution/origins.html](http://www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/evolution/origins.html) [http://www.umich.edu/~bio440/evolution.html](http://www.umich.edu/~bio440/evolution.html) [http://www.omnimag.com/archives/antimatter/evolut.html](http://www.omnimag.com/archives/antimatter/evolut.html) What?? you tell me a puny group of fish doesn’t qualify as large? I got your little pissy little kitty cat right here! [http://members.tripod.com/~bigguapote/oldworld.html](http://members.tripod.com/~bigguapote/oldworld.html) [http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Flats/5328/aquarium/tang.html](http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Flats/5328/aquarium/tang.html) (I hope the links work…) ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053/27 "2001-03-08T15:06:54Z")
Pit Vipers: Sorry, that was a rattlesnake website. Bad on them for saying “pit vipers” and bad on me for not noticing. I’m having an awful time nailing down a date for rattlesnakes. ☹ Bears: Here’s one. [http://www.gov.ab.ca/env/fw/bears/bio.html](http://www.gov.ab.ca/env/fw/bears/bio.html) > [@](#): > > The grizzly bear evolved in the near and post-glacial, mostly treeless habitats of the Pleistocene (last 2 million years of reoccurring ice ages). Re a possible chimp/human hybrid: [http://www.texnews.com/news/chimp012697.html](http://www.texnews.com/news/chimp012697.html) > [@](#): > > By JOHN MacCORMACK / San Antonio Express-News > > SAN ANTONIO - Ending decades of speculation that he represents some kind of missing link, genetic testing has shown that Oliver the chimp is just that - a chimp. > > Oliver, now a resident of the Primarily Primates sanctuary in Boerne, walks upright like a human. He was put on display throughout the world in the 1970s, touted as a mysterious man-ape perhaps the missing link. > > “He’s not a human-chimp hybrid. His chromosome number is 48, which is a normal chimp karyotype,” said Dr. David Ledbetter, a geneticist at the University of Chicago who analyzed Oliver’s chromosomes. > > Human beings have 46 chromosomes. For years, rumors circulated that Oliver had 47 and represented a biological amalgam between man and ape. Also at: [http://www.academicpress.com/inscight/04021998/graphb.htm](http://www.academicpress.com/inscight/04021998/graphb.htm) And there’s [this:](http://www.bio.net//hypermail/MOLECULAR-EVOLUTION/mol-evol.199209/0573.html) > [@](#): > > For a real mad scientist scenario, I would anticipate that > human-chimp chimeras would be “viable”-i.e. capable of developing > through to at least the neo-natal stage. This is an extrapolation from > other successful interspecific chimeras-the “geep” (goat + sheep) for > example. What kind of a life such a being could have would give one > pause. Chimeras are produced by literally mixing together two > embryos at, say, the 8 cell blastula stage. Problems of incompatible > karyotypes do not arise. > -Lee Altenberg > Dept. of Zoology, Duke University I don’t know enough about this. Anybody else wanna comment? ---
**Author:** ![domina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/96bed5/32.png) [@domina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/domina)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053/28 "2001-03-08T19:25:58Z")
DDG, the word “rattlesnake” refers to any of dozens of species of pit viper, so that might explain your difficulty. As for a chimp/human hybrid, I don’t want to think about it. ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053/29 "2001-03-08T23:35:18Z")
I don’t know about a chimp/human hybrid, but this thread has brought back memories of the extremely creepy (although well-done) miniseries [First Born](http://us.imdb.com/Title?0096584) about a human/gorilla hybrid which was shown on A&E several years ago. IIRC, a scientist artificially inseminates a female gorilla with his own sperm, and then when the baby comes out looking mostly human, he takes it in (without telling his wife where the baby came from). It gets creepier from there. There were some particularly weird scenes in which the hybrid (named “Gor” – gee, that’s not a giveaway) meets his gorilla Mom. ---
**Author:** ![Badtz\_Maru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e36b37/32.png) [@Badtz\_Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badtz_Maru)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2001, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053/30 "2001-03-09T04:16:16Z")
How much does a gorilla cost? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2001, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053/31 "2001-03-09T04:30:40Z")
So, just how _are_ hybrids classified, biologically? To make this a little less esoteric, let’s look at a mule. What species is it? Is it even considered a member of any species? As to Oliver, if he is, in fact, a chimera (rather than a true hybrid), then that wouldn’t necessarily be shown by the karotype of a single cell. Each individual cell would either be a human cell with 46 chromosomes, or a chimp cell with 48. I presume that the geneticists testing him thought of this already, and took samples of numerous different cells from different parts of his body. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2001, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053/32 "2001-03-09T15:55:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Chronos \* > **So, just how _are_ hybrids classified, biologically? To make this a little less esoteric, let’s look at a mule. What species is it? Is it even considered a member of any species?** If the parents are considered to be members of clearly different species, then the hybrid is not a member of either. A mule would be described as _Equus caballus x asinus_. A human/chimp hybrid, if it could exist, would be described as _Homo sapiens x Pan trogdolytes_. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-cats-the-newest-large-animal-on-earth/57053.md?page=1)