How similar are we to Chimps and Gorillas?

Species cannot produce fertile offspring.Are we different enough from Chimps/Gorillas that we can't produce offspring, sterile or fertile?
I'm doing this for a school paper, but I have not been able to find any extensive research on the subject.{Note from Adminnemooseus - This message 1 is a bit ragged, but I wanted to get it out without blowing a lot of time in the PNT process. Please see messages 2 and 3 also, before replying to this message. BTW, this edit added after Rrhains message 7 was already posted.}This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 12-29-2005 11:34 PM

I think you meant to say "Species can produce fertile offspring". I will restate this as "Is a human/chip or human/gorilla hybred possible"? You're asking members of this forum to help you do your homework. Such, in the past, has been viewed by management as being a shakey proposition (for lack of better terms). Might we ask "for what level in school and what class are you doing this paper?"Adminnemooseus

Haha, thanks for catching that error on definition of species. I meant to say that organism of different species cannot produce fertile offspring.
This is a HS english paper on hoaxes. I'm exploring the theory that bigfoot could be a hybrid between a chimp and a human.This message has been edited by Gibbersome, 12-29-2005 06:37 PMThis message has been edited by Gibbersome, 12-29-2005 06:39 PM

Topic tossed out into discussion, while it's still relevant to doing the paper.Adminnemooseus

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Hey Gibbersome, Welcome to the boards!Just a heads up, since you are new, it's often hard to take anything said here on face value. You really have to know who's saying it to know how valid it is.Take everything with a grain of salt!!!On hybrids in general - remember that just because two species can not produce fertile offspring doesn't mean they can't produce any offspring. Mules and Ligers are good examples of sterile hybrids.On Human/Gorilla or Human/Chimp hybrids - don't think it's possible. HAven't seen any evidence for it.You may want to look up "Humanzee" on Google to get a link to Oliver - a bonobo (a species of erect walking chimps that doesn't get enough press) which was often billed as a human/chimp hybrid. He wasn't.As for Bigfoot's origins - I'd look into information about gigantopithecus, an extinct (?) species of ape from Eastern Asia. Seems like a better culprit than a hybrid.

{Please note footnote of message 1, which was added after this message was already posted. - Adminnemooseus}Gibbersome writes:

quote:

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Species cannot produce fertile offspring.

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Going with your correction that different species cannot produce fertile offspring, that simply isn't true. Different species can produce fertile offspring such as dog/wolf hybrids.The question of just what is a species is not easily answered. While it is true that if two organisms cannot reproduce or only produce infertile offspring is good evidence that they are not the same species (since members of the same species produce fertile offspring...remember, the contrapositive of a true statement is true), it is not necessarily true that because two organisms can produce fertile offspring that means they are the same species.Speciation can happen through reproductive isolation. Note, it is not enough that the members of the species just can't physically get to each other. It's that they don't.All that said, I don't think anybody has ever tried to do a human/ape hybrid. One problem to get around is that humans and the other apes have a different number of chromosomes. This isn't always a problem: The common horse and Przewalski's horse have a different number of chromosomes (64 and 66, respectively) and yet they are able to produce fertile offspring (with 65 chromosomes). However, differing numbers of chromosomes can lead to problems with fertility and viability.So is "Big Foot" a human/ape hybrid? The world will probably never know: We have no evidence of the existence of "Big Foot" so we can't test it directly and nobody is going to run the risk of actually trying to create such a hybrid.This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 12-29-2005 11:32 PM

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

I am in a class that is evolution vs. creationism, and we discussed this issue also. What we came up with was that ethics come into play on situations like this. Who are we to breed a gorilla/monkey with a human? This won't help on your paper, but I just thought I would share that.

I was in a class where my Professor said that the human genetics and chimp genetics are close enough where there theoretically could be a hybrid. This of course brought up the debate on who would raise it, or why anyone would want to have a hybrid.

Not directly relevant to the hybrid issue, but to Bigfoot in general, there is an interesting version of the 'Patterson' film where the shakiness of the footage has been corrected for allowing a much clearer view of the supposed Bigfoot's gait.http://www.bigfootencounters.com/files/mk_davis_pgf.gifTTFN,WK

Hello... I'm new to this board. Thought I'd say hi.

Welcome to EvC Trinity. Pull up a chair...er...not that one, that's mine.Hope you find topics that peak your interests and you join in on the debate. We do try to keep our threads on topic no matter what it seems like sometimes In my signature box are some helpful links for newcomers. A few other very helpful likes include our Forum Guidelines and the HTML and dBCode links to the left of the text box when you are replying to someone.Again, welcome and we hope you enjoy your stay.

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AdminAsgara Queen of the Universe

http://asgarasworld.bravepages.com http://perditionsgate.bravepages.com

A subject near and dear to my heart...I studied with the guy that was perhaps the sole scientific supporter of finding a Bigfoot/Sasquatch. Follow the link for his obituary:http://www.rense.com/general20/foot.htmThe case for the existence of Bigfoot is not whether it was a hybrid of sorts, but rather a case for parallel evolution with regard to bipedalism. Dr. Krantz hypothesized that humans and Gigantopithecus were only distantly related and that Bigfoot may have been more closely related to Orangutans.The latest fossil evidence for Bigfoot is dated to about 300k years ago and most of the fossils are teeth found in Chinese apothecary shops. A jawbone gave more conclusive evidence that the giant ape was bipedal.Dr. Krantz reconstructed a skull from a jawbone cast and hypothesized the creature had a cranial capicity of about 600 cc or about half the capacity of a human. It was not particularly intelligent, was nocturnal, subsisted on things such as pine needles and did not hibernate. It occupies/occupied a similar niche to the black bear, but was more active in the winter and avoided direct competiton by having a different habit than the bears.He gave names to some of the footprint specimens such as "Cripplefoot" and would look for new individuals by their distinctive footprints.Indians may say only that they have smelled Bigfoot when asked about whether they have seen them and they regard the existence of the creature as a fact.The smell is said to be acrid and repulsive...so if you are out in the forest of the Northwest and you smell something really bad, consider that you might want to look around in the daylight for some large impressions in the dirt somewhere.

http://www.amazon.com/...duct/0609601415/103-3162875-7897446I could not believe that Gould tried to slip in a reference to the Morris's and the Gish's of the worlds when comparing Owen and Huxley. It is sad because with the issue of posteriorizing a horn (space) I now do understand better that Johnson is correct about how wrong the current evolutionary elite is. I was very suprised to UNDERSTAND that no matter what DNA similarity is accounted between man and the apes the conditions of the hippocampus is the pelvis of the debate v a via delving into the issue as deeply as the elite already are....With respect to the term homology there discussed Gould might have been "covertly" refering to Croizat's rhetorical use of 50 vs 49 or 51 percent vs the whole series underdebate but since he brings in creationism I find that biology has even lost me to the issue that seems so much clearer within the primates.The argument to similarity based on DNA IS A RUSE and this is not a"good" word.There is now little wonder in my mind why Gould would have thought about the terrible notion of interbreeding humans and primates. I had and will now never even think this. It was a wrong idea even from the biology of it all.We are different enough that this question should not even be asked at all.
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http://www.nobeliefs.com/Gould1.htmThis message has been edited by Brad McFall, 02-17-2006 02:59 PM

Doesn't all that seem like some excessive extrapolation? I don't see how you could deduce bipedalism from a jawbone, as far as I know you would need a pelvis for that. I also don't think you could work out intelligence from the jawbone either, when Homo floresiensis made tools despite having a small brain.Couldn't a repulsive smell be a skunk?