#OLIVER CHIMPANZEE FREE#

The offspring with its 63 chromosomes is, however, infertile. Again, my example is based on horses and donkeys (but it is also true for bulls and antelopes): they can successfully crossbreed, even though their number of chromosomes is different (62 and 64 chromosomes for horses and donkeys, respectively). So, it appears that it is more complicated than a simple date of last ‘gene distribution’.ĭuring my research, I found many people arguing that chimpanzees and humans can surely not produce viable offspring due to the different number of chromosomes, namely 48 chromosomes for chimpanzees and 46 chromosomes for humans.

This is similar to the dating of the last common ancestor of modern horses and donkeys which is dated at 4 to 4.5 million years ago (3). While the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees is often dated back to 13 million years ago, a recent analysis observed more recent gene flow in chromosomes: humans and chimpanzees still had sex and produced offspring until ‘as recent’ as 4 million years ago (2). This is definitely more than other pairs of species that can produce offspring, like horses and donkeys that have an estimated similarity of 94%, so it surely cannot be the answer to the problem.Ī major factor in determining the possibility of fertilizing another species’ eggs is the amount of time that has elapsed since the last individual that both species descend from, referred to as the last common ancestor. Great apes are obviously different in body posture, strength, communication, behavior and (in most cases, according to human assessment) intelligence, but more than 95% of their whole DNA sequence is identical to ours, with even 98.8% similarity for their coding DNA (1). Some physical and behavioral evidence led the Bergers to believe Oliver was a creature other than a chimpanzee, perhaps a human-chimp hybrid: Oliver possesses a flatter face than his fellow chimpanzees Oliver was habitually bipedal (before being struck with arthritis), never walking on his knuckles like his chimpanzee peers and Oliver may have preferred human females over chimpanzee females.Cross-breeding between species has long been reported for horses and donkeys, which gives rise to mules and more recently for tigers and lions (‘Liger’) and bovines and antelopes (‘Beefelo’), but is cross-breeding between great apes such as chimpanzees and humans possible? Is the link between the two species close enough? What actually determines the possibility of cross-breeding? Is it the similarity of DNA between species or the number of chromosomes, or is it rather dependent on evolutionary history? Supposedly, the chimpanzee had been caught in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire). Despite his somewhat unusual appearance and behavior, scientists determined in the 1990s that Oliver is not a human-chimpanzee hybrid.Oliver was acquired as a young animal (around 2 years old) in 1960 by trainers Frank and Janet Berger.

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Oliver (born circa 1958) is a Common Chimpanzee and a former performing ape once promoted as a missing link or 'Humanzee' due to his unusually human-like face and a tendency to walk upright.

#OLIVER CHIMPANZEE FREE#

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Oliver chimpanzee