David Barash, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, in his new book, assures that humanity has long had all the necessary technologies to create human-chimpanzee hybrids, the so-called "humanzee". The Daily Mail reports.
Moreover, according to Barash, scientists should purposefully create such hybrids, as this will help people understand their animal essence and better understand animals. After that, people will cease to catastrophically destroy the fauna of our planet, since they will understand that animals are not much different from us. In general, according to Barash, the creation of "humanze" is simply an amazing idea.
A shot from the American science fiction film Planet of the Apes.
The psychology professor's new book is titled "Through a glass brightly: Using science to see our species as it really is".
It was released in response to a recent statement by evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup that scientists secretly created a chimpanzee-human hybrid almost 100 years ago in a Florida laboratory, but destroyed it shortly after birth, fearing the moral and ethical side of the issue.
Gallup assured that his former teacher, who had previously worked in this secret laboratory, told him about this. This was in the 1930s. The hybrid was obtained after artificial insemination of a female chimpanzee with human sperm from an unknown donor. Few believed in the success of the experiment, but the chimpanzee unexpectedly became pregnant and was able to fully bear the fetus and safely give birth to a cub.
In a review of his book in the new issue of the scientific journal Nautilus, it is indicated that Barash's main opinion about humanity is that people mistakenly consider themselves to be a species separated from nature. He calls this belief "the most harmful myth of all time promoted by theologians (theologians)."
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According to Barash's book, so-called CRISPR technology must be used to create a hybrid of chimpanzees and humans. It allows you to replace or remove ("turn off") certain genes and thus achieve the desired compatibility.
“However, it is not yet clear whether the creature created on such a basis will be a true hybrid of ape and humans, or a monstrous laboratory chimera like those created by GMO specialists. I bet it's probably the last option,”admits David Barash.
In addition to the Florida experiment, attempts to create a hybrid of chimpanzees and humans were made by the Russian biologist Ilya Ivanov in 1920s in Africa. To do this, he also wanted to use female chimpanzees and human sperm, and later African women and chimpanzee sperm. But he failed (according to official data).
Also in the Western press, a case was reported from China, where in 1967 a female chimpanzee allegedly became pregnant from a human, but due to mistreatment in the laboratory, she died with the fetus.
In the 1970s, the chimpanzee Oliver became famous in the United States. He was so different from other chimpanzees in his appearance and behavior that many were convinced that he was a hybrid of chimpanzees and humans. A study of his DNA later gave the answer that Oliver was, after all, an ordinary chimpanzee.
Humans and chimpanzees are quite similar to each other, especially bonobo chimpanzees. They are reported to have 99% similar DNA regions. Chimpanzees know how to create tools, they have a highly developed emotional connection between relatives, they know what grief is, they know how to quarrel and put up after conflicts.
In terms of genome size, humans and great primates do not differ from each other, but differ in the number of chromosomes - in humans there is one pair less, in humans there are 23 pairs of chromosomes, i.e. only 46. Chimpanzees have 48 chromosomes.
From their common ancestor, humans and chimpanzees began to diverge along different branches of evolution, according to various estimates, from 5.4 to 7 million years ago.
