Try to think of it like this, even if the sperm of a dog and the egg of a woman (or vice versa) were to get together, humans and dogs and every other living thing, from plants to bacteria have correcting mechanism in their cells.
It’s kind of like this, the DNA would try to match and it would produce and error, the cell would have a correcting mechanism, this is wrong, it would cut this part of the gene out and try again. Eventually the cell would say this, is just garbage get rid of it.
When one has a sunburn the DNA of the skin is damaged and at first the body will try to correct it but when it becomes obvious it’s too much to fix, it just kills off everything and your skin peels and the skin starts over fresh. Well usually if it happens enough even that won’t repair the skin totally and moles happen. Some of these may become cancer if the damage is too great.
Those are not exact examples but they are in the same vein of thinking.
Even with humans if the sperm and egg aren’t just so the body sheds it. It’s thought that when a woman has an unusually heavy period that may be the result of a miscarriage. Of course this is so early on, most women wouldn’t even know they were pregnant.
So the body would recognize this is an error and get rid of it long before it developed into anything more than cells.
If science could manipulate it, it would take a LOT and I mean a LOT of intervention on the part of science to keep it going.
Slight nitpick: no scientifically documented cases. There are many cases “documented” in ancient and medieval accounts that purport to be factual, for instance some of the stories that account for the cynocephali. As most of these are secondhand based on hearsay, there’s no reason to credit them, but the authors at the time evidently did. I only mention them because the legendary traditions they are based on keep the possibility alive in the popular imagination, prompting questions like the OP’s.
Nope, Bushbabies are primates, and people are primates. Raccoons are carnivorans, and dogs are carnivorans. All the carnivorans are equally distant cladisticly from all the primates.
I guess I can sleep at night knowing Al Gore won’t bust in demanding we search for it and kill it because he’s “totally serial” that it’s a real threat.
I believe it has. I was reading an article in the Guardian, where they sequenced Neanderthal Mitocondrial DNA, there was no trace of Neanderthal Mitocondrial DNA in humans. Further Reading.
Some still argue that the Bonobo (Pygmy Chimpanzee) is merely a subspecies of Pan troglodytes. Part of the argument is political, not biological. I am pretty sure that Pan troglodytescan interbreed with Pan paniscusseparate species or no. They seem closer than, say, Tigers and Lions.
As I pointed out above, whether or not the two forms can interbreed or not is not directly relevant to the question of whether or not they are species. If they can’t interbreed due to physiological reasons, that definitely makes them separate species. However, even if they can interbreed in captivity, that doesn’t necessarily make them the same species.
The ranges of bonobos and chimps don’t overlap, so that the question of interbreeding in the wild can’t be directly tested. In such cases, genetics can help provide a guide. Bonobos and chimps seem to have diverged roughly 1 million years ago (different studies vary somewhat), which is comparable to the divergence times for many good species. However, the western subspecies of chimpanzee is also rather distinct (though less so than bonobo), and hence could merit species recognition itself.
True,just because two species can interbreed does not mean they normally do so in their natural habitat, just like Tigers and Lions. Thus, it’s not proof that bonobos and chimps are the same species, just that they are fairly closely related (which no one denies). I had also heard the million year figure.
I did not know that about Pan troglodytes verus, interesting.
Anyway, the line between a subspecies and a species is not always all that black and white.
I know this is complete hearsay, as far as this discussion is concerned, but I must share it…
While I was in high school, one of my instructors told this story - the instructor’s father was a reasearch doctor at a university. While the instructor was a college student himself, his father got him a job working in a part of the research facility. His job was to “prep” mis-carried fetuses for dissection (these were collected at the attached university hospital). Once, he was presented with what was identified to him as a mis-carried fetus, however it did not appear to be that. In his description, it was a somewhat amorphous blob, with tiny fins, covered in fur, and possessing a single small developed tooth in what could only charitably be described as the mouth.
This instructor told us that, through research and interviewing the woman who produced this, that she had been undergoing radiation treatment for cancer and had a habit of screwing horses.
I don’t have any reason to believe this instructor was pulling our legs, it wasn’t his style and we didn’t have that kind of relationship with him. So, I take the story to be truthful in the telling.
If he was prepping foetuses for ongoing research dissection why would he be presented with something that clearly wasn’t a foetus? Something so atypical would obviously be useless for ongoing research. Even if we assume it was genuine, the only way he could end up with such an item was if someone was pulling his leg, in which case there is no reason to assume it was genuine.
If it was genuine then it sounds like a textbook teratoma, not a foetus.
