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From: overt@antony (Christian Overton)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Man vs Woman vs Chimp DNA Percentages
Message-ID: <15067@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM>
Date: 22 Sep 90 18:21:51 GMT
References: <1803@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu> <68103@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <7713@milton.u.washington.edu>,<999@massey.ac.nz> <0093D12D.0754D500@wystan.bsd.uchicago.edu>
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Reply-To: overt@antony (Christian Overton)
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In-reply-to: dan@wystan.bsd.uchicago.edu

In article <999@massey.ac.nz>, AChamove@massey.ac.nz (A.S. Chamove) writes:
>Over the past few years, there has been a lot of debate on the following
>question: 
>If chimps and humans are so close genetically, then why can we not make
>hybrids?  Of course a lot of people say that we can and could.  Others
>say that there are incompatibilites, but no one I have encountered has
>been able to specify what those incompatibilites are. Can you?
>arnold

I've heard unsubstantiated stories that viable human/chimp hybrids have been
born.  The first rumor I remember is the report of a primate being kept in a
cage somewhere in Africa during the early part of this century. The primate was
more human looking than either a chimp or gorilla, but clearly not human.  The
conjecture was that it was a human/chimp hybrid.

The second rumor is that China had successfully bred human/chimp hybrids, but
that these were all destroyed during the cultural revolution and the experiments
abandoned.

Unfortunately, at the moment I can't remember the sources of either rumor other
than that the sources were reputable.  Well ok, at least I'm pretty sure I
didn't read them in a science fiction story.  Has anybody else out there heard
these or similar stories?

  Chris
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