Also, would such a hybrid have rights, in your view? Why or why not?
Been reading Next?
My state just passed a law against this.
I guess they must be worried about Chicken Lady or something.
Sorry, missed edit window: AZ law
According to that article it’s a Class 6 Felony (not sure what that means but it sounds like srs bzns) to create a humanzee but it’s only a misdemeanor to buy one. Interesting.
The hybrid is called Bigfoot.
I don’t think anyone has created a humanzee, but I’m sure someone has tried. I seem to recall reading stories about a Russian (I think?) scientist either right before, during, or right after WWII who claimed, or was reported as, experimenting with this.
But I would think that at some point in human history someone either took chimp semen and squirted it inside a human female, or took human semen and squirted it inside a female chimp.
There was a story on NPR’s Radiolab about a biology professor who was musing about the definition of human life if this were achieved, and a female student who was in danger of not completing her degree if she didn’t do a fantastic senior thesis came to him and volunteered to have a chimp/human embryo implanted in her uterus. She figured she would observe its development, abort it just before birth, and collect her A+. Needless to say it never came to pass.
But I thought this was a hilarious story of the extents students will go through to get a good grade and recounted it to everyone I knew, so it’s become a bit of a running gag with my friends. We haven’t discussed the thorny issues of human rights that much, but we have given great thought to the practical matters of raising a chimp/baby. I’m glad to hear we’re not the only weird ones out there.
Well, wouldn’t the right it gets depend on its sentience? After all, if the “humanzee” was sentient, its rights would be obvious, wouldn’t they?
I’m surprised that you seem to think that, of course, nobody would actually try having sex with a chimp directly. Or maybe I’ve just been on the internet long enough to be completely jaded about the depths of sexual perversion humanity is capable of.
As for whether a humanzee would have rights, I certainly think so. Chimps really aren’t that different from us to begin with, even though many people find that uncomfortable to accept.
Chimps can (and have) torn off human extremities (hands faces noses) if they get irritated. If you’re going to boink a female chimp you’d better have some mad skillz.
Humanzees walk among us. I have worked with them. Generally they have more rights because nobody wants to put up with the shit they sling when they realise they work for peanuts.
you forgot they tried and were unsuccessful
until they can do some sort of recombinent stuff, it isnt going to happen
it is going to have to be pretty much entirely human looking to be given any sort of rights, no matter how intelligent it ends up being.
Having heard about a situation where a guy tried to have sex with a horse and then died of a perforated colon, I would not expect the fact that such a thing is dangerous and ill-advised to stop certain segments of humanity.
NVM
I don’t think humans and chimps are close enough on the ol’ tree to make a hybrid by natural means.
I’m pretty sure one of my old girlfriends was part monkey, though.
I think perhaps you mean intelligent rather than sentient. “Sentient” is a bit of a slippery term, but I am fairly sure that, on any standard definition, chimps are already sentient, and very possibly ants and earthworms are too. They all have senses and react to stimuli, and we have almost as good reasons to believe that chimps are conscious, and even self-conscious, as we do to believe that other humans are (ants and earthworms are more debatable).
Actually, though, “intelligent” is a pretty slippery term too, and most people would probably agree that chimps have a degree of intelligence, indeed, a degree greater than that of most other types of animal, even if not as great as that of humans.
I think, in fact, that the characteristic (related to intelligence) which we should, and probably would, use as the criterion of whether humanzees should have human-level rights (in our society, many animals, including chimps, are already considered to have some rights) would be whether it would be possible to hold a conversation with them: whether they could learn to speak our language (or some other human language, such as Deaf Sign Language) up to the level of being able to have a genuine exchange of ideas. Strenuous attempts to teach chimps and other apes to do this have so far failed (although they can learn a few simple terms and term combinations). I think, though, that if someone could have a real conversation with a humanzee, even if it were pretty stupid compared to an average human, they would find it pretty difficult not to feel that it deserved the same rights and considerations that we grant other humans (including mentally retarded ones, and, of course, mentally undeveloped ones, such as young children).
Actually, where the DNA has come from has very little to do with whether a being deserves human-level rights. If we ever find out how to have a conversation with dolphins, then I think we should and would want to accord them such rights too (And, I suppose, we should have been according them those rights all along. I do not think it follows that we should grant them those rights now, however. Although dolphins are one of the species that seem most likely to have the capacity for real, conversational-level language, in fact, on the available evidence, that likelihood still remains very low indeed: really only fractionally higher than the likelihood that we might find that sheep, or even earthworms, have the capacity.)
Incidentally, I did not fill in the poll, because it contains no options between “chimp-human hybridization is definitely possible” and “hybridization is definitely impossible.” I do not know whether it is or not. What I do say is, if it is possible and did happen, their rights would depend on their communicative abilities.
So Arizona won’t allow humanzees in the state, even if they do carry citizenship papers at all times? :rolleyes:
Maybe we could borrow a term from the webcomic “Schlock Mercenary” (and others) and call them “sophonts” 
Back to the main theme of the thread… I have not voted on the poll because, as mentioned earlier, the only options appear to be “it’s possible / it’s impossible”, not leaving an option for “I don’t know”.
And it appears that there was at least one attempt to produce a chimpanzee-human hybrid: Ilya Ivanov, Soviet biologist, apparently tried to perform the experiment. The information comes from a newspaper (the Scotsman, which appears to put a rather sensationalist slant on the story), Wikipedia, and (ahem) “Cracked”, so, take it with as many grains of salt as you wish 
I think I’ve met a few.