If monkeys have 99% of human DNA can why cant we get them pregnant or why cant they get us pregnant??
Horses + Donkeys = Mule (or something like that). So why cant we make a new species with monkeys?
No one has tried, basically.
Other then that, I should probably point you to the discovery channel (or TLC?), there was a program called “oscar” where such an “unholy” union might have taken place.
Blah I put can by accident and it wont let me edit :mad:
I think the OP has monkeys confused with apes, and in this case, chimpanzees, who apparently share at most 98.5% of their DNA with us.
I did a search for oscar on discovery.com and it says " Sorry nothing found"
Yeah, I’ve been having trouble locating any info on Oscar either, but I do remember watching the program.
Which probably doesn’t help you much, does it?
I’m pretty sure people have tried. There’s laws against beastiality because people actually do that sort of thing.
They say in Java the orangutan was just considered a different kind of man.
So, the answer would be that they just aren’t all that close.
Some dispute that cro-magnan and nieanderthals were close enough, so man and apes are even less compatable than that.
Sigh, this is the best I can find: http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf110/sf110p06.htm
I also saw the Discovery Channel show. If I remember correctly, the genetic verdict was chimpanzee… he’d just been trained to do human-like things. I think.
Try googling under ‘Humanzee’, that is what the show was called, IIRC. In any case, genetic testing did indicate it had 48 pairs of chromosomes (which is normal for a chimp) rather than the 46 pairs a human has.* It also explained the funny look of the chimp by explaining that it is a rare subsecies of chimp that lives in jungle area not normally visited by eurpeans/westerners, and (again, IIRC) that this specific sub-species makes up about 3% of the world chimp population. I was actually pretty pissed, because the entire show builds this case strongly implying the chimp was a human chimp hybrid, and during the last 5 minutes explains that it was indeed a chimp - I guess it seemed extremely misleading for a show that was supposed to be some sort of documentary. But then again, IMHO, Discovery channel is crap when it comes to… well, this is General Questions, isn’t it?
*I haven’t done biology since sophmore year of college, so my chomosome numbers could be off (correct me if I’m wrong please, the battle against ignorance and all that) but I do know for sure that the creature had the same number of chomosome pairs as a chimp rather than a human.
I tried to find what % of DNA horses and donkeys share, but couldn’t. Anyone know? Mightn’t it be more than 99%?
But remember - 99% isn’t that much. We share 2/3 with moths and half with bacteria. Also % similarity is only a rule of thumb. It’s entirely possible that there’s some genes that just don’t work together. A horse/donkey (mule) can’t breed. What if a human/chimp embryo can’t implant into a womb?
i heard a top geneticist on tv pointing out that yes, we do share 99% of our DNA with Chimpanzees, we also share over 50% of our DNA with bananas
It is much easier to do cross species hybrids with animals (and even plants) than it is to do cross genus hybrids (i think impossible with animals). Donkeys and horses are both in the Equus genus. Humans and chimps belong to two different genuses.
From what i’ve read :).
Plant wise it’s far easier to do cross genus hybrids:
- Fatshedera = Hedera helix, Fatsia japonica
- Mule Palm = Syagrus romanzoffiana, Butia capitata
Like actual mules the above two are sterile. Consequence of hybridization. So, if a human chimp cross were possible, the result would be sterile.
I general, yes, but aren’t some boundaries pretty arbitrary? I mean, they drew up the genus map a while ago now.
I did a quick google on “human chimp genus” and got http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030519/chimp.html It’s news, not science, so I don’t trust it as authoritative, but I don’t think you can categorically say humans and chimps are too different to breed simply on the basis of their categorization.
Interesting point about plants, though. I’m guess it’s partly because plants tend to be less centralised? (similarly allowing cuttings and splicings, etc)
Every taxonomic level above species is an arbitrary human construction (hell, even species definitions have some problems). There is no such thing as a natural “genus” or “kingdom” – merely what humans define for convenience. Also, based on general morphological or molecular methods, humans, chimps, and gorillas should probably be placed in the same genus. It is only human pride that has caused us to place ourselves in an exclusive genus. (Who wants to be categorized with a bunch of stinking apes?)
I have little to contribute to the OP, but if humans and chimps have different numbers of chromosomes (which I believe they do), then viable offspring (at least ones without severe defects) are highly unlikely.
The “99%” number is the result of a badly-flawed analysis done decades ago in extremely incomplete data. What was done was a simple homological comparison of individual gene sequences specifically for individual base-pair changes.
This comparison utterly ignored genomic arrangement, insertions, deletions, chromosomal position, etc. Of course, that information was not yet available. As more and more real genome information is coming to light, including the POSITIONS of the genes in the genome and their orientations on chromosomes, we are looking less and less genetically “similar” to other primates.
However, the grasp of real science by the popular press is worse than that had by my four-year-old.
we were looking at the humanzee thing yesterday on another mesage board at work. it has info on oscar, and a picture. its freaky looking, like a hybrid but they tested its DNA and found it to be 100% chimp. its a rare one found in the congo.
i dont have a link, and im not sure about the ethics of posting a link to another message board here
And a large number of experimental subjects, all in the name of science, of course, have accordingly attempted to mate with bananas. Evidence of these experiments can be found abundantly on the Web. However, I’m not familiar of any cases of offspring resulting from these unions.
I remember seeing a lady on Ripleys Believe It Or Not and she looked like a chimp. She was an average size woman and spoke english very well but her facial features were chimp like.
I wouldn’t call the original analysis “badly flawed.” It was quite correct for reporting a figure of about 99% based on what it was comparing - which was, as you say, short stretches of DNA and looking only at point substitutions.
It’s really irrelevant whether the “real” similarity is 99% or 97% or whatever. The point of the comparision was that (1) chimpanzees are much more similar to other humans than either is to any other primate (2) their divergence seems to have occurred much more recently than would have been predicted based on their morphological differences. These findings have held up.
(I agree whole-heartedly with your last paragraph, however.)
We have addressed the issue of human-chimp genetic similarity, and the possibility of hybridization quite a few times on the board:
Here are a few:
Half-man, half-ape? (Apparently the ape in the Discovery show was called “Oliver,” not “Oscar,” which is why you are having trouble finding it.)
I read something intresting about a human/animal like woman named zana
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/5103/wildman/hybrid.html