The first I heard about this was several years ago, reading about Oliver the chimp. Some people believed that maybe he was a human/chimp hybrid (which proved not to be the case). But it ot me thinking. So I googled. And googled and googled… and, much to my surprise, I couldn’t find anything stating conclusively that such a hybrid wasn’t possible.
Anyone here know any different?
We have been through this here several times as well. I don’t think anyone demonstrated that it is absolutely impossible. I think there were some recent threads on this. I will try to find them.
Here you go:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=277227&highlight=chimp
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=278538&highlight=chimp
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=196816&highlight=chimp
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=303537&highlight=chimp
Thanks. And my apologies for asking an already over-asked question :smack:
Basically leaves me with the same answer I had before: no one knows. However, I think it’s probably safe to predict that we’ll have a definative answer in the not-too-distant future.
Yessss . . . Barring unforeseen setbacks, you’ll be hearing from my army of human-chimp hybrid clones in about three months! 
Tip: You have a better chance of living if you present buttocks. But you must be willing to follow through on the offer.
Awhile back I remember reading that it was theoretically possible. Then I remember reading awhile after that that chimps and humans aren’t quite as closely related as previously thought, I think it was something like they revised our shared DNA down from 99.5% to like 98%, that was said to have made the chance of a “chumanzee” significantly lower.
Personally I dunno, and there’s a lot of good reasons we should probably never try to find out. Can you even imagine the legal troubles for a chumanzee? All men are equal under the law, but are all chumanzees??
No, I’ve never seen 99.5%. Different measurements result in different results, and I’ve seen results varrying between 95% and 98% (roughly). But that’s neither here nor there. There have been many hybrids of large mammal species that are more distantly related to each other than Humans and Chimps (or Bonobos).
Also, such a hybrid would not be called a chumanzee. It would be called a humanzee or a chuman, depending on which species supplied the ovum and which supplied the sperm. The most common convention is to put the father’s species name first in the hybrid name. Humanzee = dad is Human, mom is Chimp
The big problem to overcome is the fact that chimps have 48 chromosomes and humans have 46, yielding a hybrid with 47 chromosomes - not a good thing.
Different chromosome numbers isn’t a killer. Yes, humans and chimps have different numbers. No, it isn’t optimal. But a horse has 64 chromosomes and a donkey 62; the mule presumably would have 63. Odd numbers of chromsomes can be overcome (think Down or Turner Syndrome or XYY males). Viability is mostly due to DNA complement, not actual number.
Not necessarily a problem. One of the human chromsomes is simply the fused version of two chimp chromosomes*. Lots of animals are able to hybridize with species which have different chromosome numbers for exactly that reason. It’s not optimal, and usually leads to sterile offspring, but it’s not a showstopper for hybridization.
*gross oversimplification alert: they’re really not “chimp” chromosomes, but are the fused chromosomes of whatever our common ancestor with chimps had. We presume that is the case since gorillas have the same number of chromosomes as chimps, and we’re more closely related to chimps than chimps are with gorillas.
Apparently, the Soviets tried to breed half human, half gorilla warriors during the 1920’s, but the attempts failed.
I don’t know how accurate that story is, although I have heard it elsewhere. Interestingly, though, the article you cited mentions only chimps and monkeys, not gorillas.
Personally, I think this falls into the “rumor” rather than “fact” category. There are similar rumors about experiments in China-- supposedly the people found out and rioted, killing all the scientists involved. Sounds kind of suspicious to me.
Man, I have got to get me a Himp.
You should post that in this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=354349