I’ve heard that the difference in the difference between horses and donkeys is similar to the differences between humans and chimps.
Donkeys and horse make mules.
**Could a human and chimp make a humanzee? **
Good question. Good, disgusting question.
In short, nah. Donkeys and horses speciated much more recently than the ancestors that led to chimps and humans. They’re part of the same genus, equus. Humans are the only in the same order as chimps, primates. Humans are the only members of our own genus currently living, genus homo.
Well, some might say that this site depicts such a creature. 
This has been discussed several times before.
Here’s one thread :Can Humans and Chimps Breed?
In my opinion, it could be possible that humans and chimps could produce a viable hybrid. It’s impossible to determine this in advance, however. It’s pretty certain, though, that a hybrid would be sterile, because of differing numbers of chromosomes in humans and chimps.
pravnik, humans and chimps are close enough genetically that some scientists have proposed we should be in the same genus. By the standards applied to many other organisms, that would be the case.
There is a recent effort to put chimpanzees into the homo genus because they are much more closely related to us than to other apes. Keep in mind that taxanomic names have been tradtionally given by appearance and only recently has genetic mapping been used.
As for the OP you may have to **** a chimp to find out.
In any case, there are many instances of intergeneric hybrids in animals. While the ability to hybridize tends to be correlated with genetic distance, species that are quite distantly related have been known to hybridize.
I didn’t know that. Learn somethin new every day on this board, I tells ya.
Looking at the article it, appears chimps and humans have been tracked as branching off between 5-6 million years ago. Horses and donkeys apparently branched off about 2-4 million years ago. One thing about horses and donkeys; not only can they produce offspring, they want to. Very much so. If you’ve ever had a stallion look amorously and intently at a jenny you’re riding, you’ll know what I mean. It’s a look that will stay with you. So, assuming chimps and humans can’t produce offspring and don’t want to*, what a difference a few million years makes.
*This may be an unwarranted assumption. I have seen chimps that did appear to wish to mate with me, but only with the same half interest that they wanted to fling poo at me.
Yah, but can you mail order a hot looking chimp?
It was once thought that Oliver might be a “humanzee” but tests revealed otherwise.
I certainly don’t know enough about biology to answer the OP, so I will have to defer to Colibri there, but I would be willing to bet that it is NOT possible for humans and chimps to produce a hybrid offspring.
No one has ever produced a chimpanzee/human hybrid. As far as I know there aren’t even any rumors of sightings of ‘humanzees’. We could assume that this is because no man has ever considered having intercourse with a chimpanzee, but would such an assumption be reasonable? I don’t think it would be.
If humans and sheep or humans and dogs could produce hybrids, we’d be seeing hybrids all over the place. But we don’t see any humanzees. Therefore, I think it’s safe to say that such breeding is impossible.
I’ve always been fascinated by that question.
Chimps have one more chormosome than humans (one of ours is a fused version of two ape chromosomes) but this hasn’t prevented other animals from pruducing viable, if sterile, offspring.
Camels have been crossed with a species of llama (can’t remember which one) and they are thought to have branched off 11M yrs ago.
Here’s an equally interesting question, and one that avoids the ethical issues of doing the experiment:
Coud chimps and gorillas interbreed? If they could, seems like it would be possible for humans and chimps to do so. I’ve done a bunch of googling on the chimp/gorilla question and always come up dry.
it was an Alpaca crossed with a camel.
… And for that matter, how about a chimp and a bonobo?
If they can’t, I’d expect the human/chimp deal not to work either.
I’d expect that any of those attemts at hybridization would need multiple tries to evalute success/failure. And perhaps there are techniques of IVF that could be used to make it succeed in the lab where it might not in vivo, or by simple articicial insemination methods.
Well, there’s a difference between highly unlikely and impossible.
I’ll grant you that, given the sexual proclivities of humans, the experiment has no doubt. Whether it has been made often enough to rule out the possibility that such a thing could ever occur is arguable.
However, even if hybridization is not possible in vivo - possibly due to incompatible secretions in the reproductive tract or other factors - it’s conceivable (no pun intended) that hybridization could be engineered in the lab using . in vitro techniques.
Colibri:
That’s our second mind meld this week, only this time my post made it first.
I must be slipping . . .
Colibri: Actually, I was very interested in your thoughts on the chimp/bonobo/gorilla hybrid. Any comments?
That doesn’t mean much. Przwalski and domestic horses are 100% interfertile depite differing choromosome counts. Cattle and bison are resonably interfertile, horses and donkey are occasionally interfertile.
The difference in chromosome number is probbaly less of a barrier than straight the devolopmental differences.
I also wouldn’t believe that too many peolpe have tried having sex with chimps. Aside from the simpl fact that very few peolpe have access to chimpanzees, chimps are big animals, and unwanted advances would probably result in a very painful experience. Bonobo are slightly smaller, but I still wouldn’t want an irate female bonobo near my unprotected, umm, equipment. Those things have got *fangs[/i.
Blake: But I think it’s safe to say that the sheep/human experiment has been tired enough to know that it doesn/t work. After all, there are no “Hu-eep” in New Zealand!
Althought there might be a few she-man…
That could be of some interest, but I’m not sure it would prove anything.
Although we may be closer to chimps genetically than either of us are to gorillas, chimps and gorillas are structurally and morphologically much more similar to each other. Humans proportionately have much longer legs, shorter arms, and of course much larger craniums than either.
It has been suggested that these differences are generated by mutations to the genes that regulate development (as opposed to those that govern enzymes or structural proteins). For example, our legs develop at a much more rapid rate than those of apes, thus resulting in their hypertrophy.
If this is the case, then a chimp-human hybrid embryo could easily experience a conflict in developmental rates produced by the two sets of genes that could be lethal, whereas these rates would not be so mismatched, and thus not fatal, for a chimp-gorilla hybrid.
There is also the matter that chimps and gorillas have the same chromosome number, while we have one fewer, though this might not cause developmental problems.