4 ms·

Extremely interesting. I suggest you to read the article at http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html T

by Geee 13y ago

Extremely interesting. I suggest you to read the article at http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html The author seems to be a well-established scientist, and the arguments are quite plausible, given that this level of hybridization actually could be possible. What I find amazing (based on the article) is that hybridization hasn't really been researched very well, and that hybrids aren't actually infertile, on the contrary to popular belief. As the article points out, this indeed sounds as ridiculous as Darwin's proposal that humans descend from apes.

gus_massa 13y ago
Many hybrids are infertile. There are some documented cases of fertile hybrids in very related animals and very related plants (plants are weird!). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_(biology)#Hybrid_species http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_(biology)#Hybrid_species But and hybrid between a chimp and a pig: simply no way! Even creating a live pig-chimp hybrid is probably almost impossible, a fertile pig-chimp hybrid would be a miracle.
- twstws 13y ago
  This. The author makes the absurd claim that because many hybrids are fertile, any hybrid could be fertile. Using hybridization between two closely related birds to support the notion that pigs and apes could breed is ridiculous.
  - goldfeld 13y ago
    The scientist behind this hypothesis makes no such claim: "For my own part, curiosity has carried me away from my old idea of reality. I no longer know what to believe. Is it possible that so many biologists might be wrong about the nature of human origins? Is it possible for a pig to hybridize with a chimpanzee? I have no way of knowing at present, but I have no logical or evidential basis for rejecting the idea. Before dismissing such a notion, I would want to be sure on some logical, evidentiary basis that I actually should dismiss it. The ramifications of any misconception on this point seem immense." --from macroevolution.net He says it would be possible and there's evidence in physiology. Saying there's no way or that it would be a miracle (and dismissing it for that) is showing a misunderstanding of evolution. Given enough time and enough tries, it could happen. A bacterium becoming a mitocondrium within a cell is one of the most astounding miracles of life and scientists have never been able to reproduce it (and mind you, generations of cells come by far easier and faster than of chimps and pigs), yet it happened, perhaps exactly and only once, but it happened and that's why all animals exist. I think, like the author, that some curiosity and imagination is never a bad thing. It's led to our most interesting discoveries.
    - twstws 13y ago
      He makes the argument on his website: http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html#at_pco=cfd-1.0 http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html#at_pco=cfd-... 1 people think hybrids are sterile, but they're not 2 people think hybrids don't occur in nature, but they do 3 people think only plants hybridize, but animals do to From this basis, he concludes that a chimp-pig hybrid is plausible, and proceeds to lay out his theory. The problem is the three facts he starts with are trivial compared to the obstacles raised by PZ Meyer. To take just one, there is the difference in chromosome number. In most cases, if a human ends up with the wrong number of chromosomes, it's a lethal condition. Or you end up with Down's syndrome. With one extra chromosome. The hybrid this guy posits has a dad with 38 chromosomes and a mom with 48. I could argue that that's not a big deal. In the plant groups I study stranger things happen. But that's in plants. Primates, as I understand it, are much more sensitive to chromosomal abnormalities. There are many logical, evidential reasons to discount this hypothesis. Again, check out the pz meyer post linked elsewhere. Claiming I don't understand evolution because "given enough tries anything is possible" is facile. Of course anything is possible. But what is probable here?
      - goldfeld 13y ago
        I think we agree it's highly improbable, but then all major leaps of life and evolution have been. From that ground, I don't see why you seem to be angry at the guy for making a (minimally plausible, not because of the obstacles, but because of what the theory would explain) leap of faith and then wanting to prove his way there scientifically, tagging the whole ordeal 'absurd' and 'ridiculous.' Sure the hybrid has parents wildly different genetically. But if two individuals who have a high chance of producing fit offspring may by chance produce unfit individuals, then we also agree the hybrid would have to have been a minimally fit individual by chance born from two parents who have a very low chance of doing so. A person with Down syndrome is not a catastrophe of nature, and not fundamentally a disease, such that through successive backcrossing (women with Down syndrome are usually fertile) it could theoretically produce a different kind of Homo that would be fit for some imaginary environment conditions. Or at least would still be a far more intelligent creature than all other animals we have on this planet.
- a-priori 13y ago
  It doesn't matter that fertile hybrids are unusual. For evaluating this theory, it only has to be possible to produce a fertile chimp-pig hybrid. Then, given a large number of chimp-pig... interactions, you can then assume that eventually one would be successful. (That said, before you interpret this as me supporting the theory, please read my top-level comment)
  - darkmighty 13y ago
    Nope, possibility is never enough evidence (disregarding likelihood). The old tale from thermodynamics: "Entropy tends to it's maximum. In reality there is a chance that all air in the room will concentrate in a small spot and entropy will decrease; how often did you see that happening?"
  - sageikosa 13y ago
    The problem is that those pigs and chimps that try to interbreed and fail would be wasting time and resources and end up falling behind in fecundity to their "breed true" cousins. Evolution would disfavor such behaviors as they would represent a vanishingly small percentage of the their respective gene pools.
    - dougk16 13y ago
      Unless, perhaps, both particular species of ape and pig routinely had sex for pleasure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sexual_behaviour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sexual_behaviour suggests it's possible), and just happened to cross paths. In this case, they're not really wasting resources as they would have been having non-reproductive sex anyway.
      - sageikosa 13y ago
        It's not just the "casual" contact time; for females, they would very often be wasting a reproductive cycle on a fetus that would (in the statistically significant majority of cases) self-abort.
- lesslaw 13y ago
  You say "no way" as though you are an authority on the subject to a hypothesis put forward by a man who is an authority on the subject.
arcadeparade 13y ago
I cant believe how realistic an idea he made it sound.
sottomayor 13y ago
>The author seems to be a well-established scientist Stopped reading there. 'Consensus science' isn't science.

by Geee 13y ago

gus_massa 13y ago

Many hybrids are infertile. There are some documented cases of fertile hybrids in very related animals and very related plants (plants are weird!). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_(biology)#Hybrid_species http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_(biology)#Hybrid_species But and hybrid between a chimp and a pig: simply no way! Even creating a live pig-chimp hybrid is probably almost impossible, a fertile pig-chimp hybrid would be a miracle.

twstws 13y ago
This. The author makes the absurd claim that because many hybrids are fertile, any hybrid could be fertile. Using hybridization between two closely related birds to support the notion that pigs and apes could breed is ridiculous.
- goldfeld 13y ago
  The scientist behind this hypothesis makes no such claim: "For my own part, curiosity has carried me away from my old idea of reality. I no longer know what to believe. Is it possible that so many biologists might be wrong about the nature of human origins? Is it possible for a pig to hybridize with a chimpanzee? I have no way of knowing at present, but I have no logical or evidential basis for rejecting the idea. Before dismissing such a notion, I would want to be sure on some logical, evidentiary basis that I actually should dismiss it. The ramifications of any misconception on this point seem immense." --from macroevolution.net He says it would be possible and there's evidence in physiology. Saying there's no way or that it would be a miracle (and dismissing it for that) is showing a misunderstanding of evolution. Given enough time and enough tries, it could happen. A bacterium becoming a mitocondrium within a cell is one of the most astounding miracles of life and scientists have never been able to reproduce it (and mind you, generations of cells come by far easier and faster than of chimps and pigs), yet it happened, perhaps exactly and only once, but it happened and that's why all animals exist. I think, like the author, that some curiosity and imagination is never a bad thing. It's led to our most interesting discoveries.
  - twstws 13y ago
    He makes the argument on his website: http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html#at_pco=cfd-1.0 http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html#at_pco=cfd-... 1 people think hybrids are sterile, but they're not 2 people think hybrids don't occur in nature, but they do 3 people think only plants hybridize, but animals do to From this basis, he concludes that a chimp-pig hybrid is plausible, and proceeds to lay out his theory. The problem is the three facts he starts with are trivial compared to the obstacles raised by PZ Meyer. To take just one, there is the difference in chromosome number. In most cases, if a human ends up with the wrong number of chromosomes, it's a lethal condition. Or you end up with Down's syndrome. With one extra chromosome. The hybrid this guy posits has a dad with 38 chromosomes and a mom with 48. I could argue that that's not a big deal. In the plant groups I study stranger things happen. But that's in plants. Primates, as I understand it, are much more sensitive to chromosomal abnormalities. There are many logical, evidential reasons to discount this hypothesis. Again, check out the pz meyer post linked elsewhere. Claiming I don't understand evolution because "given enough tries anything is possible" is facile. Of course anything is possible. But what is probable here?
    - goldfeld 13y ago
      I think we agree it's highly improbable, but then all major leaps of life and evolution have been. From that ground, I don't see why you seem to be angry at the guy for making a (minimally plausible, not because of the obstacles, but because of what the theory would explain) leap of faith and then wanting to prove his way there scientifically, tagging the whole ordeal 'absurd' and 'ridiculous.' Sure the hybrid has parents wildly different genetically. But if two individuals who have a high chance of producing fit offspring may by chance produce unfit individuals, then we also agree the hybrid would have to have been a minimally fit individual by chance born from two parents who have a very low chance of doing so. A person with Down syndrome is not a catastrophe of nature, and not fundamentally a disease, such that through successive backcrossing (women with Down syndrome are usually fertile) it could theoretically produce a different kind of Homo that would be fit for some imaginary environment conditions. Or at least would still be a far more intelligent creature than all other animals we have on this planet.
a-priori 13y ago
It doesn't matter that fertile hybrids are unusual. For evaluating this theory, it only has to be possible to produce a fertile chimp-pig hybrid. Then, given a large number of chimp-pig... interactions, you can then assume that eventually one would be successful. (That said, before you interpret this as me supporting the theory, please read my top-level comment)
- darkmighty 13y ago
  Nope, possibility is never enough evidence (disregarding likelihood). The old tale from thermodynamics: "Entropy tends to it's maximum. In reality there is a chance that all air in the room will concentrate in a small spot and entropy will decrease; how often did you see that happening?"
- sageikosa 13y ago
  The problem is that those pigs and chimps that try to interbreed and fail would be wasting time and resources and end up falling behind in fecundity to their "breed true" cousins. Evolution would disfavor such behaviors as they would represent a vanishingly small percentage of the their respective gene pools.
  - dougk16 13y ago
    Unless, perhaps, both particular species of ape and pig routinely had sex for pleasure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sexual_behaviour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sexual_behaviour suggests it's possible), and just happened to cross paths. In this case, they're not really wasting resources as they would have been having non-reproductive sex anyway.
    - sageikosa 13y ago
      It's not just the "casual" contact time; for females, they would very often be wasting a reproductive cycle on a fetus that would (in the statistically significant majority of cases) self-abort.
lesslaw 13y ago
You say "no way" as though you are an authority on the subject to a hypothesis put forward by a man who is an authority on the subject.

arcadeparade 13y ago

I cant believe how realistic an idea he made it sound.

sottomayor 13y ago

>The author seems to be a well-established scientist Stopped reading there. 'Consensus science' isn't science.