A bit off top[ic but related:
Humanzee:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee
Terminology
Geneticists generally use portmanteau words to describe hybrids, with the order of syllables indicating which parent is which. This is important because of the phenomenon ofgenomic imprinting where genes are expressed differently depending on which parent contributed them. The names are formed according the convention first part of sire's name +second part of dam's name (except where the result is unwieldy). For geneticists, "Chuman" therefore refers to a hybrid of male chimpanzee and female human, while "Humanzee" or "manpanzee" refers to a hybrid of male human and female chimpanzee. [2] (cf. tigon/liger) This distinction is not always followed in popular speech.
[edit] Feasibility
Humans have one fewer pair of chromosomes than other apes, since the ape chromosomes 2 and 4 have fused into a large chromosome (which contains remnants of thecentromere and telomeres of the ancestral 2 and 4) in humans. [3] 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.
The genetic structure of all the great apes is similar. Chromosomes 6, 13, 19, 21, 22, and X are structurally the same in all great apes. 3, 11, 14, 15, 18, and 20 match between gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans. Chimps and humans match on 1, 2p, 2q, 5, 7–10, 12, 16, and Y as well. Some older references will include Y as a match between gorillas, chimps, and humans, but chimpanzees (including bonobos) and humans have recently been found to share a large transposition from chromosome 1 to Y that is not found in other apes. [4]
This level of chromosomal similarity is roughly equivalent to that found in equines. Interfertility of horses and donkeys is common, although sterility of the offspring (mules) is nearly universal (around 60 exceptions have been recorded in the whole of equine history [citation needed] ). Similar complexities and prevalent sterility pertain to horse-zebra hybrids, orzorses, whose chromosomal disparity is very wide, with horses typically having 32 chromosome pairs and zebras possessing between 44 and 62 depending upon species. In a direct parallel to the chimp-human case, the Przewalski horse (Equus przewalskii) with 33 chromosome pairs, and the domestic horse (E. caballus) with 32 chromosome pairs, have been found to be interfertile, and produce semi-fertile offspring, where male hybrids can breed with female domestic horses. [5]
In the 1920s the Soviet biologist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov carried out a series of experiments to create a human/non human ape hybrid. At first working with his own sperm and chimpanzee females, none of his attempts created a pregnancy. [6] In 1929 he organized a set of experiments involving nonhuman ape sperm and human volunteers, but was delayed by the death of his last orangutan. [6] The next year he fell under political criticism from the Soviet government and was sentenced to exile in the Kazakh SSR; he worked there at the Kazakh Veterinary-Zootechnical Institute and died of a stroke two years later.
In 1977, researcher J. Michael Bedford [7] discovered that human sperm could penetrate the protective outer membranes of a gibbon egg. Bedford's paper also stated that human spermatozoa would not even attach to the zona surface of non-hominoid primates (baboon, rhesus monkey, and squirrel monkey), concluding that although the specificity of human spermatozoa is not confined to man alone, it probably is restricted to the Hominoidea.
In 2006, research suggested that after the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees diverged into two distinct lineages, inter-lineage sex was still sufficiently common that it produced fertile hybrids for around 1.2 million years after the initial split. [8]
However, despite speculation, no case of a human-chimpanzee cross has ever been confirmed to exist.
