Dr. Ivanov Successful...

Actually what I continuously said was that a Gibbon and a human were not viable because we are so distantly related... but the penetration of the egg wall gave me hope for a hybrid with chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and earlier discovered bonobos and Bili Apes...

and as I also pointed out there are no successes.
and As I also said, just because the Sperm can penetrate the Protective lining, doesn't mean the egg will be fertilized in this case.

Genetics can be surprising. For example, there have been fertile mules. If just one or two fertile/non-sterile hybrids are born that exhibit superior traits for servitude, they would quickly be bred with the better examples in the lab and inevitably over two or three generations there would be a "population."

very few Fertile Mules.
one should also point out that the offspring of said fertile mules tended to be Infertile.

I defer to Fenrir here, I brought up Zeedonks in an earlier post as well and many zorses, zeedonks, etc. are entirely fertile.

no, as with most Hybrid animals, the Zorses and Zeedonks are more likely than not infertile.

You keep ignoring the One Major factor of your Ape-men.

Can it be carried to term?
if you cannot even pass this step, then there's no point talking about what great servants they'd be.

also, there was a research project in...2006 I believe that showed Humans and Chimps could Interbreed and produce fertile offspring......for 1.2 Million years after the Initial split.

trying now is pushing that.
 
Actually Zorses and Zeedonks are occasionally fertile but frequently the male offspring are not at all sterile.

Yes, from everything I have read they can be carried to term - especially by human or bonobo, bili ape, or chimp/gorilla hybrid mothers. If there were fertile/non-sterile offspring these could be used to breed with humans creating a mostly human but partly ape subspecies which should be fertile/non-sterile and would suit the purposes of soldier-serfs for Stalin.

I loathe the concept of moving this to ASB as much as I loathe the concept of being moved to the kid's table in the middle of a Thanksgiving dinner political discussion, but if most of you count "improbable" as "ASB" (which is preposterous IMHO) I will move it to ASB on one condition...

We treat the discussion and ensuing TL as seriously and as non-ASB as possible in spite of its placement on that forum and some actually intelligent speculative historical fiction writers/debators follow it over there...

Can I please have some volunteers?

EDIT: By the way, I am in no way saying that there's any lack of intellect or seriousness on the ASB side, people. Seriously no disrespect. I just want this treated with a little more seriousness than the fanciful "magic" TL's I have to avoid over there... ;)
 
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Actually Zorses and Zeedonks are occasionally fertile but frequently the male offspring are not at all sterile.

key word there.
"Occasionally".
Mules are infertile because they have 63 chromosomes.
Zonkeys and Zeedonks have a Greater variation because of the amount of Chromosomes the Donkey has.
I don't know Why you keep insisting Male Zorses and Zeedonks are fertile. because of Haldane's Rule the Males of these hybrids are Rarely fertile, and the Females are Weakly Fertile.

a Human Being has 46 Chromosome. a Chimpanzee has 48.
any Hybrid would have 47, and therefore Infertile because of the uneven Number.
Maybe a few will be fertile, but only a few. not enough to establish a breeding population, and even then there's no guarantee the Offspring will be fertile.

Yes, from everything I have read they can be carried to term - especially by human or bonobo, bili ape, or chimp/gorilla hybrid mothers.

assuming the Hybrid is possible.
Like I keep saying, just because the Sperm can break the lining, it doesn't mean the egg will be fertilized.
why are you ignoring that? That is the major hurdle you need to cross, and you have Nothing to prove it wrong.
You are ignoring the Vital FIRST steps that need to be taken to get this started.

I loathe the concept of moving this to ASB as much as I loathe the concept of being moved to the kid's table in the middle of a Thanksgiving dinner political discussion, but if most of you count "improbable" as "ASB" (which is preposterous IMHO) I will move it to ASB on one condition...

ASB also includes other weirdness, including the Highly Improbable.
and like I said, a Successful Apeman project, in the 1920s is Improbable, if not Impossible.
You keep ignoring that.
You Want it to happen, but are ignoring the facts.

we point out the Hybrids, IF they can be made, would be largely infertile. any fertile Offspring are going to be weakly fertile, and thus the whole project reaches a dead end.
 
key word there.
"Occasionally".
Mules are infertile because they have 63 chromosomes.
Zonkeys and Zeedonks have a Greater variation because of the amount of Chromosomes the Donkey has.
I don't know Why you keep insisting Male Zorses and Zeedonks are fertile. because of Haldane's Rule the Males of these hybrids are Rarely fertile, and the Females are Weakly Fertile.

"Rarely"..."weakly"... You ever have anything definitive to say?

a Human Being has 46 Chromosome. a Chimpanzee has 48.
any Hybrid would have 47, and therefore Infertile because of the uneven Number.
Maybe a few will be fertile, but only a few. not enough to establish a breeding population, and even then there's no guarantee the Offspring will be fertile.

The odd number thing isn't always the rule. And again, weasel words: There's no guarantee the offspring will be fertile." Just as there is no guarantee they wouldn't be. I assumed that within reason we would be allowed to speculate on this forum...

That's what we do.



assuming the Hybrid is possible.
Like I keep saying, just because the Sperm can break the lining, it doesn't mean the egg will be fertilized.
why are you ignoring that? That is the major hurdle you need to cross, and you have Nothing to prove it wrong.
You are ignoring the Vital FIRST steps that need to be taken to get this started.

The possibility exists that it could be fertilized and the offspring be fertile, right? You don't have anything to prove that it's impossible and therefore I'm moving on. The POD would be that it worked and worked well... noone wants me to pretend to be a geneticist and detail it to you to death as a scientific charlatan, and as I writer, I absolutely refuse to do that anyway.

If you know something that I don't and want to help, fine, but you have to stop repeating, "BUT WHAT IF IT'S IMPOSSIBLE! WE DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!" because it's not constructive.

It's possible and implausible, we've established that.

You detailing how much we both don't know is boring me to death.:cool:
 
Wasn't that story disproven? The fine doctor was experimenting with cross breeding, yes, but I think the Stalin planning an ape army part was made up by a Russian newspaper. Stalin was heavily opposed to interracial marriage; why would he support interspecies crossbreeding?

That said, mixing a human and ape would have unknown results. You could end up with something with the brain of a human and the strength of an ape or the brain of an ape and the strength of a human, or something mutated and mentally retarded. Genetics is a crapshoot.
 
Wasn't that story disproven? The fine doctor was experimenting with cross breeding, yes, but I think the Stalin planning an ape army part was made up by a Russian newspaper. Stalin was heavily opposed to interracial marriage; why would he support interspecies crossbreeding?

From everything I have read it was totally legit. I'm sure the Soviet government wanted it to look like a farce but there is documentation of importation of apes and even eyewitness accounts of the Sukhumi compound. Stalin not wanting pure Russians breeding with "inferior races" has little to do with force breeding prisoners with apes to create slaves. He was a nutter...

That said, mixing a human and ape would have unknown results. You could end up with something with the brain of a human and the strength of an ape or the brain of an ape and the strength of a human, or something mutated and mentally retarded. Genetics is a crapshoot.

Exactly my point. I'm positing that the crapshoot was a highly successful one.

As a side note, interspecific hybridization can have non detrimental genetic side effects as well. For example, sometimes the product is even larger and smarter than it's parents and they are also more sucseptible to things like albinism, genetic chimerism, etc.
 
"Rarely"..."weakly"... You ever have anything definitive to say?

Don't be an ass.
we both know that the Likelihood of Fertile Cross species Hybrids are very slim.
it has been Proven with Zeedonks, Zorses, Mules.... Yes, some are fertile, but for the most part, they are Not.
the Evidence is right there, and all you have is some half assed "You have anything definite to say?"

you want something definite?

here.

Wikipedia said:
The offspring display traits and characteristics of both parents. The offspring of an interspecific cross are very often sterile; thus, hybrid sterility prevents the movement of genes from one species to the other, keeping both species distinct.[9] Sterility is often attributed to the different number of chromosomes the two species have, for example donkeys have 62 chromosomes, while horses have 64 chromosomes, and mules and hinnies have 63 chromosomes. Mules, hinnies, and other normally sterile interspecific hybrids cannot produce viable gametes because the extra chromosome cannot make a homologous pair at meiosis, meiosis is disrupted, and viable sperm and eggs are not formed.

Not the best source, but much better than "you have anything definite to say?"

The odd number thing isn't always the rule. And again, weasel words: There's no guarantee the offspring will be fertile." Just as there is no guarantee they wouldn't be.

Yes, it's not always the Rule, but for the vast majority of Hybrids, it is true.

and again, Weasel words: "there is no guarantee they wouldn't be."

I assumed that within reason we would be allowed to speculate on this forum...

That's what we do.

and within that reason, I have given my reasons I find a viable Human-ape hybrid in the 1920s is extremely unlikely.

this is also taking into account of the Fact that Ivanov's Experiment involving Artificially inseminating Actual Female Chimpanzees with Human Sperm Failed.
that right there should tell you something.

The possibility exists that it could be fertilized and the offspring be fertile, right? You don't have anything to prove that it's impossible and therefore I'm moving on. The POD would be that it worked and worked well... noone wants me to pretend to be a geneticist and detail it to you to death as a scientific charlatan, and as I writer, I absolutely refuse to do that anyway.

Lemmee get this straight...

You want a Human-ape hybrid, but you don't want to bother with the Nitty-gritty details of how the hell that is going to work, because it's too hard?
You want us all to shrug our shoulders and not as "how did it work?".

really?

If you know something that I don't and want to help, fine, but you have to stop repeating, "BUT WHAT IF IT'S IMPOSSIBLE! WE DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!" because it's not constructive.

Look very carefully at what I said early on:

Theoretically it's Possible, but the Ability and technology to actually do it is not available in the 1920s..
a Successful Human-ape Hybrid in the Early 20th century is not.

Right there, My opinion is there are too many obstacles for the "Species #1 Sperm+Species #2 Egg" method of creating a Hybrid to be successful in this scenario.

Hybrids are always a Challenge to make, how many tries do you think it took until a Successful Mule or Zorse or any other relatively common Hybrid?

Maybe in the Future a Successful Humanzee could be created, but it would most likely be from a Genetic engineering Laboratory, not from Dr. Infiniteape's Basement Zoo.
 
From everything I have read it was totally legit. I'm sure the Soviet government wanted it to look like a farce but there is documentation of importation of apes and even eyewitness accounts of the Sukhumi compound. Stalin not wanting pure Russians breeding with "inferior races" has little to do with force breeding prisoners with apes to create slaves. He was a nutter...

No, no. I recall the documentary on this. An hour of "look at Stalin's secret ape warriors!" with a five minute conclusion of "nevermind, the guy whose story this was taken from says that a Russian tabloid picked up his story on Dr. Ivanov, changed it into Stalin wanting a monkey army, and world newspapers picked it up from there. Tune in next week for the secrets of Nostradamus!"
 
I don't know the first thing about genetics or the science involved but I would REALLY love to see how differently politics evolve in this TL. If the Nazis discover the project how will this change their outlook towards the soviets? Will any captured soviet Humanzees be another victim of the Einsatzgruppen or TTLs version of the final solution?

assuming a similar history up into the Cold War, will Humanzees have any role in the space race? How would this change the UN charter? Would we see a declaration of Hominid rights, or maybe sentient rights?

How will this change society's view on Animal rights, vegetarianism etc. A lot of this depends on the Humanzee's intelligence, but I would love to see a Humanzee rights, political movements etc. If they were intelligent enough we could see Humanzee thinkers develop theories about their place in Marxist-Leninism and the USSR. Imagine a Humanzee defecting to the West, denouncing the USSR's oppression of its people. How would Humanzees be incorporated into Human Sports events?

What a really fascinating WI.
 
No, no. I recall the documentary on this. An hour of "look at Stalin's secret ape warriors!" with a five minute conclusion of "nevermind, the guy whose story this was taken from says that a Russian tabloid picked up his story on Dr. Ivanov, changed it into Stalin wanting a monkey army, and world newspapers picked it up from there. Tune in next week for the secrets of Nostradamus!"

wasn't that on Monsterquest?
 
Don't be an ass.

But it's so hard...

we both know that the Likelihood of Fertile Cross species Hybrids are very slim.
it has been Proven with Zeedonks, Zorses, Mules.... Yes, some are fertile, but for the most part, they are Not.
the Evidence is right there, and all you have is some half assed "You have anything definite to say?"

You misquoted me, I used the word "definitive". I am trying to posit that because it is possible, let's say it occured.


Yes, it's not always the Rule, but for the vast majority of Hybrids, it is true.

and again, Weasel words: "there is no guarantee they wouldn't be.".

Hoisted by my own petard... Still, you're not giving me anything that suggests that this is ASB in any way. You are continuously saying, "Improbable" and that, for me does not inarguably qualify as "Magical or Impossible." Maybe I'm not so good at English though. Do improbable and impossible mean the same thing?



and within that reason, I have given my reasons I find a viable Human-ape hybrid in the 1920s is extremely unlikely.

this is also taking into account of the Fact that Ivanov's Experiment involving Artificially inseminating Actual Female Chimpanzees with Human Sperm Failed.
that right there should tell you something.

It tells me he was underfunded, was using orangutans instead of chimpanzees, and was found out beyond the iron curtain which brought some degree of embarassment to the Russian govt. For these reasons he was unsuccessful. Also, it's possible that such a hybrid would never have been possible... but you still can't prove that...



Lemmee get this straight...

You want a Human-ape hybrid, but you don't want to bother with the Nitty-gritty details of how the hell that is going to work, because it's too hard?
You want us all to shrug our shoulders and not as "how did it work?".

really?.

Basically.

What I'm saying is, even if it were so probable that it hurts, I cannot describe to you how. F*ck, even if it totally happened and was entirely successful I would not be able to explain to you how... and neither could you.

As a matter of fact, nobody can tell you how it is possible. Even scientists smarter than us can only say, "It's possible. Unlikely, but possible."

Right there, My opinion is there are too many obstacles for the "Species #1 Sperm+Species #2 Egg" method of creating a Hybrid to be successful in this scenario.

Hybrids are always a Challenge to make, how many tries do you think it took until a Successful Mule or Zorse or any other relatively common Hybrid?

How many tries do YOU think it takes? Because clearly, your opinion on your own knowledge of science is the prerequisite for a good AH. Also, you didn't need to capitalize "challenge" or "successful."

Maybe in the Future a Successful Humanzee could be created, but it would most likely be from a Genetic engineering Laboratory, not from Dr. Infiniteape's Basement Zoo.

Who told you about my basement zoo? Stay out of my basement, Fenrir...
 
I don't know the first thing about genetics or the science involved but I would REALLY love to see how differently politics evolve in this TL. If the Nazis discover the project how will this change their outlook towards the soviets? Will any captured soviet Humanzees be another victim of the Einsatzgruppen or TTLs version of the final solution?.

If the numbers are high enough, I can forsee a diaspora of escaped peoples of Apish descent spreading throughout Europe and being just as poorly treated elsewhere as in their own country. And because they are technically part animal, Human Rights will probably not apply to them for quite some time.

assuming a similar history up into the Cold War, will Humanzees have any role in the space race? How would this change the UN charter? Would we see a declaration of Hominid rights, or maybe sentient rights?

I was definitely thinking about the space race here. More able to control a vessel than the apes typically used but all at once completely expendable. I was kind of thinking that the inevitable uprising should be the result of the careless death of a Humanzee cosmonaught.

As for Hominid Rights I am almost positive that at some point there would be some outcry for equality, especially if these hybrids are intelligent enough that they could be sentient beings. It may alter the "Great Ape Rights" movement towards a bit more success which if it turned militant could be devastating for Africa. A bunch of Primate revolutionaries going "back to Africa" to educate their fellow apes and attempt to organize cells that give the rainforest back to the ape and ape-man. Could get ugly if there are enough of them and they are angry (aggressive) enough.

Arming an intelligent apeman and giving it an identity as the oppressed proletariat has an end result that seems nightmarish to me. Great stuff, right?

How will this change society's view on Animal rights, vegetarianism etc. A lot of this depends on the Humanzee's intelligence, but I would love to see a Humanzee rights, political movements etc. If they were intelligent enough we could see Humanzee thinkers develop theories about their place in Marxist-Leninism and the USSR. Imagine a Humanzee defecting to the West, denouncing the USSR's oppression of its people. How would Humanzees be incorporated into Human Sports events?

Animal rights would definitely change, and as the sixties loomed, there would be a lot of Humanzees destined for association with various movements... for better or worse. For example, some of them of course would try to enter into the arts or show business and (once they were accepted as anything other than the cast of the Planet of the Apes, etc.) would use these outlets to spread their message. Others would try to infiltrate or start their own version of more militant groups. There would surely be a Black Panther-esque Priman movement.

The civil rights movement on the other hand, might shun them to legitimize its own goals... Which would mean black and white alike are uncomfortable with the equality of people with ape blood and the apes will be pissed off enough to do some harm.

And that could, of course, also affect how early they are accepted as people who deserve equality. By the time they do acheive equal rights, most of them would have been bred out, assimilated back into ape and human populations, and could only expect repairations or affirmative action type initiatives to suggest their sentience after the fact.

What a really fascinating WI.

Thanks! Feel free to pitch in!:D
 
No, no. I recall the documentary on this. An hour of "look at Stalin's secret ape warriors!" with a five minute conclusion of "nevermind, the guy whose story this was taken from says that a Russian tabloid picked up his story on Dr. Ivanov, changed it into Stalin wanting a monkey army, and world newspapers picked it up from there. Tune in next week for the secrets of Nostradamus!"

I can't find any information on this, but unless you can, I'm going to continue on without allowing the History Channel to count as a legitimate historical source.:p

I've seen what they call "Shocking New Discoveries" and therefore can't in good conscience allow them to ruin this for me without actual citations.
 
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