A researcher at the University of Albany assures us that euthanasia was applied to the creature at birth.
Oliver, the Humanzee.
Hybrid creatures between species have always been exclusive to the world of fiction. Film and fantasy literature is replete with stories about "crazy scientists" who perform amazing experiments to create creatures beyond our imagination. But in the real world there have also been cases of researchers who have attempted to carry out similar experiments, albeit always marked by failure. And now Gordan Gallup, a researcher at the University of Albany in New York, has surprised us with a crazy story.
According to Gallup, in 1920, a group of scientists in a laboratory at the University of Atlanta created a hybrid between chimpanzee and human beings. The researchers would have fertilized a female of that species of primates with semen from an unknown donor and not only would conception have occurred, but the pregnancy also came to fruition and the child was born without problems.
What supposedly happened then was that the same authors of the experiment, horrified by the ethical consequences of what they had just done, would have euthanized the hybrid calf. Unfortunately, Gallup has not provided any solid evidence to support this story, so his story has been greeted with much disbelief by the scientific community.
However, as we have already said, experiments such as these have been carried out. Precisely, in the same decade of 1920, Soviet scientist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov also tried to fertilize chimpanzee females with human semen, although all his tests ended up failing.
It is also worth remembering the case of Oliver, a primate that became very popular in the 70's, and you can see him in the photo. The ape showed a very special physiognomy and was able to walk in a bipedal posture, which led him to be baptized as the Humanzee, and speculate that he could run hybrid of both species. But genetic testing in 1996 showed that he had 48 chromosomes like the rest of the apes in his species.