What Animals Would Have Sex With Humans The Most?
Humanderthals!
We mated with Neanderthals. Can nosotros breed with other animals, too?
Last week, scientists announced that the human genetic pool seems to include DNA from Neanderthals. That suggests that humans interbred with their primate cousins at some point before the Neanderthals went extinct virtually 30,000 years ago. Could we mate with other animals today?
Probably not. Ethical considerations preclude definitive research on the subject area, simply it'due south safe to say that human Dna has become so different from that of other animals that interbreeding would likely be impossible. Groups of organisms tend to drift apart genetically when they go separated by geographical barriers—ane might leave to find new food sources, or an earthquake could force them apart. When the two groups come up back into contact with each other many, many years later on, they may each have evolved to the betoken where they can no longer mate.
In full general, two types of changes forestall animals from interbreeding. The starting time includes all those factors—called "pre-zygotic reproductive isolating mechanisms"—that would brand fertilization impossible. After and then many generations apart, a pair of animals might look so dissimilar from one some other that they're not inclined to take sex. (If we're non even trying to mate with monkeys, we'll never have half-homo, half-monkey babies. *) If the animals do try to go it on despite inverse appearances, incompatible genitalia or sperm motility could pose some other problem: A human spermatozoon may not exist equipped to navigate the reproductive tract of a chimpanzee, for case.
The second type of bulwark includes "mail-zygotic reproductive isolating mechanisms," or those factors that would make it impossible for a hybrid creature fetus to abound into a reproductive adult. If a man were indeed inclined and able to impregnate a monkey, post-zygotic mechanisms might result in a miscarriage or sterile offspring. The farther apart two animals are in genetic terms, the less probable they are to produce viable offspring. At this point, humans seem to have been separate from other animals for far too long to interbreed. We diverged from our closest extant relative, the chimpanzee, as many as vii million years ago. (For comparison, our apparent tryst with the Neanderthals occurred less than 700,000 years after we separate off from them.)
Researchers haven't pinned down exactly which mechanisms prevent interbreeding under most circumstances. Some closely related species tin can mate fifty-fifty if they take dissimilar numbers of chromosomes. Przewalski's equus caballus, for example, has 33 pairs of chromosomes instead of the 32 most horses have, but it tin can interbreed with regular equines anyway—the offspring takes the average and ends up with 65 chromosomes.
Neanderthals weren't our ancestors' only dalliance with other primates. "Pre-humans" and "pre-chimpanzees" interbred and gave birth to hybrids millions of years agone. In the 1920s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin sent an animal-breeding expert to Africa in hopes of creating an army of half-human, half-monkey soldiers. Attempts both to inseminate women with monkey sperm and impregnate female chimpanzees with man sperm failed.
That doesn't mean that tales of humans interbreeding with other animals haven't endured. Rumored animal-human crosses from the past few hundred years have included a man-grunter, a monkey-girl, and a porcupine homo.
Got a question about today's news? Enquire the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Trenton Holliday of Tulane University.
Correction, Nov. 15, 2006: Due to an editing error, the original version of this slice suggested that interbreeding humans and apes might produce half-human, half-monkey babies. The offspring of such a union would be half-ape, not half-monkey. (Return to the corrected judgement.)
Source: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/11/can-humans-mate-with-other-animals.html
Posted by: maloneruty2001.blogspot.com
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