Plausibility Check: Stalin's Human-Ape Hybrid Army

Caesar

Stalin's half-man, half-ape super-warriors
CHRIS STEPHEN AND ALLAN HALL
THE Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.
Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.
Source and more: http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2434192005
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Now, the reason that I decided not to put this into the ASB forum is because it isn't completely unheard of for closely related species such as lions and tigers or donkeys and horses to produce offspring.
Now, I am a bit skeptical as to whether or not this project existed, but that's why I'm asking if it was plausible.

Now, assuming that this project did exist, what would have been the consequences if it had succeeded in producing an army of Human-Ape hybrids?
 
Hapsburg

Hapsburg

Banned
As cool as it sounds, it would be impossible. Different species can only interbreed up to the genus level of the taxonomic scale. The only reason Lions and Tigers can interbreed is because they are both from the genus Panthera. To do this with a human and some kind of earlier ape, you'd have to have a Homo sapiens sapiens breed with, say, some surviving specimen of Homo habilis or Homo erectus, assuming one existed in the first place. That would be the absolute closest you could get to a "Human-Ape Hybrid". Even though chimps, our closest living relative among other Great Apes, are 98% identical to us in terms of genes, it's those 2% that prevent us from breeding.

Stalin and the Lysenkoist soviet oligarchy did not, of course, recognize this at the time, as it was not a well-known fact. Which is why he attempted the project in the first place, and yes he did try it. It failed and never would have worked unless you radically changed the basic working of genes in the breeding and mating process, in which case you'd have to push the POD back to an ultra-far point which would in this case butterfly away just about 2.8 billion years of Earth's natural history.
 

Keenir

Banned
Hapsburg said:
As cool as it sounds, it would be impossible. Different species can only interbreed up to the genus level of the taxonomic scale. The only reason Lions and Tigers can interbreed is because they are both from the genus Panthera. To do this with a human and some kind of earlier ape, you'd have to have a Homo sapiens sapiens breed with, say, some surviving specimen of Homo habilis or Homo erectus,
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actually, if you accept that the older scientific names have priority over the more recent one*, then the chimpanzee is Homo sylvanus. (named in the early 1600s by an Englishman)


* = sometimes the older names are dropped, for a number of reasons.
 

ColeMercury

Since apes have 24 chromosomes per gamete and humans have 23, the human-ape hybrids (if they were able to be bred) would be sterile. So they couldn't have lots of other little hybrid babies and take over the world: they would have to keep getting bred by apes and humans.
 

Caesar

Londo said:
Since apes have 24 chromosomes per gamete and humans have 23, the human-ape hybrids (if they were able to be bred) would be sterile. So they couldn't have lots of other little hybrid babies and take over the world: they would have to keep getting bred by apes and humans.
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Which the people in charge might easily consider a good thing.
 
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

Donor
When you say that Stalin DID attempt this, does one mean that male apes had sex with female humans, or male humans had sex with female apes, and were these humans volunteers ? One supposes that the apes were not...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

tantric

chimps have two "broken" genes where humans have one - they map out almost the same. it could be done, now. it might have happened naturally, with lots of patience.
 

Hendryk

Banned
A still ASB-ish but comparatively more plausible scenario would be that, sometime in the 1920s, Soviet scientists doing field research in central Asia capture live specimens of the legendary almasti, a local version of the bigfoot, and speculated by some paleontologists to be the last survivors of some earlier hominid subspecies. Stalin orders the specimens bred in captivity and figures that with their greater resilience and limited intelligence, they could make suitable cannon fodder.

Even then, it would take decades for the numbers of domesticated almasti to be large enough to be militarily significant.

BTW Leo uses almasti hunting as a plot device in his short story "Jakutija". Turns out there really were otherwise serious people in the 1920s who were convinced of the creature's existence.
 

Kidblast

Grey Wolf said:
When you say that Stalin DID attempt this, does one mean that male apes had sex with female humans, or male humans had sex with female apes, and were these humans volunteers ? One supposes that the apes were not...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
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I've suddenly decided I don't want to learn any more about this. :eek:
 

Dave Howery

Hendryk said:
A still ASB-ish but comparatively more plausible scenario would be that, sometime in the 1920s, Soviet scientists doing field research in central Asia capture live specimens of the legendary almasti, a local version of the bigfoot, and speculated by some paleontologists to be the last survivors of some earlier hominid subspecies. Stalin orders the specimens bred in captivity and figures that with their greater resilience and limited intelligence, they could make suitable cannon fodder.

Even then, it would take decades for the numbers of domesticated almasti to be large enough to be militarily significant.

BTW Leo uses almasti hunting as a plot device in his short story "Jakutija". Turns out there really were otherwise serious people in the 1920s who were convinced of the creature's existence.
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I've read this too. Ivan Sanderson (a notorious crytozoologist) wrote a whole book about such creatures around the world, and the Almas got a long chapter. One of his stories noted that an Alma was captured and held captive in a C.Asian village, and that it was female and gave birth to children after some of the village men did the nasty with it :eek:. Which makes me suspect that the Alma legend was originally about some tribe of humans who were different in some way from the other peoples of C. Asia....
 
Hapsburg

Hapsburg

Banned
Grey Wolf said:
When you say that Stalin DID attempt this, does one mean that male apes had sex with female humans, or male humans had sex with female apes, and were these humans volunteers ?
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Either way, it sounds like something that Quagmire would be involved in. :p

Keenir said:
actually, if you accept that the older scientific names have priority over the more recent one*, then the chimpanzee is Homo sylvanus.
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A long time ago, before modern methods of scientific observation and blood testing. Modern information and knowledge take precedence and has higher priority than older, more outdated information.
It is now accepted and well-known that the chimpanzee is Pan troglodytes.
 

Nicksplace27

Grey Wolf said:
When you say that Stalin DID attempt this, does one mean that male apes had sex with female humans, or male humans had sex with female apes, and were these humans volunteers ? One supposes that the apes were not...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
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I think they would do artifical incemination as to avoid the sheer wierdness of it.
 
Shimbo

Shimbo

Nobody has mentioned how cool Stalin's iron legion of sub-human ape warriors would be. :p

The Ape-warriors would be awesome jungle fighters. I feel a new alternative history of the Vietnam War coming on...

That could actually work as a horror film. A cross between Predator, Platoon Planet of the Apes and a Zombie film.:cool:
 

Caesar

Shimbo said:
Nobody has mentioned how cool Stalin's iron legion of sub-human ape warriors would be. :p

The Ape-warriors would be awesome jungle fighters. I feel a new alternative history of the Vietnam War coming on...

That could actually work as a horror film. A cross between Predator, Platoon Planet of the Apes and a Zombie film.:cool:
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You should do that, I'd like to read the timeline.
But another question is, if they did somehow succeed, how would the rest of the world react?
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Medically? Not a chance in the world. Completely different species, different gentics well beyond any possible "crossbreeding".
 

Douglas

Russian sub-human monkey soldiers? Sounds like a perfect match for Nazi propaganda, and I suspect if it was possible and militarily significant numbers were available, that the expense involved and the worldwide "Ewwww!" factor would make it a net drain on the USSR.
 
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