• Question: What would happen if a human and a chimpanzee had sexual intercourse? Would the baby survive?

    Asked by AnimalLover to Stéphane, Matt on 13 Mar 2018. This question was also asked by 274genm52.
    • Photo: Stéphane Berneau

      Stéphane Berneau answered on 13 Mar 2018:

      First, we are two different species: humans have 46 chromosomes and chimps 48. Therefore, there will be genetic issues.
      In order for an egg to be fertilised by sperm, the spermatozoa need to recognise the zona pellucida (protective barrier of the egg) and specifically ZP3 protein. ZP3 in humans is involve for the sperm binding.
      However, different ZP proteins are expressed and different species use different isoforms of this sperm-binding receptor.

      If a human sperm is injected into a chimpanzee egg, it might works and lead to a baby. However, nobody knows and it is not ethical.

      In Nature, there is commonly intercourse between species giving birth to sterile offsprings:
      – A liger (tiger + lion)
      – A mule (donkey + horse)
      And there are more cases… I have found a little video about it:

      Enjoy… Don’t forget to keep voting every day after 3pm 🙂

    • Photo: Matt Bawn

      Matt Bawn answered on 16 Mar 2018:

      Firstly I would hope the human would get arrested.
      As Stéphane has explained the would undoubtedly be genetic issues. However, it seems someone has allready tried:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ivanovich_Ivanov

      OK not exactly,

      “Having different numbers of chromosomes is not an absolute barrier to hybridization; similar mismatches are relatively common in existing species, a phenomenon known as chromosomal polymorphism”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee

      “Human spermatozoa display unusually limited affinities in their interaction with oocytes of other species. They adhered to and, when capacitated, penetrated the vestments of the oocyte of an ape–the gibbon”

      “Thus, although the specificity of human spermatozoa is not confined to man alone, it probably is restricted to the Hominoidea”
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/409311

      I would imaging probaility would also come into it, :- if it was attempted enough times a viable offspring may be produced.

      Similar arguments have been had about human neanderthal interactions and still some scientists don’t believe it happened.

      Anyway my answer is purely speculative and I am in no way advocating trying.

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