Is it possible for a human and a chimp to mate? If not, why not if a lion and tiger can mate to make a liger.?

Answer 1

Whether or not two species can interbreed depends on how genetically close they are to one another. If you're not an expert, genetic nearness can be inferred from looking at the taxonomic designations of animals.

Lions are Panthera leo. Tigers are Panthera tigris. Genus name is capitalized and species name is in lowercase. They are separate species (P. leo and P. tigris), but they are within the same genus (Panthera), so they can, and do, interbreed. However, since they are separate species, the offspring produced from such unions (tions and ligers) are infertile. This is also how a donkey (Equus asinus) and a horse (Equus caballus) can interbreed to produce sterile mules.

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and humans (Homo sapiens) are in different genuses. They cannot produce offspring at all.

Answer 2

This reminds me of my all-time favorite headline from the Weekly World News:

GIRL GIVES BIRTH TO CHIMP IN TRAGIC SPERMBANK MIXUP!

The humor is in wondering how many people would fall for such a thing, believing it to be possible. Okay, lions and tigers can make ligers (or tigrons, depending.) But they are even closer, genetically, than humans and chimps are. We are supposed to be 98 % the same as chimps (thought I have met some people who I thought had not yet descended from the trees) and yet lions and tigers must be an even closer match, perhaps 99 % or 99.5 % or more.

20 DEC 06, 0021 hrs, GMT.

Answer 3

I suppose, as long as you get the chimp's parents' approval.
There is also the matter of recognition of a foreign antigen, the sperm from a separate species would elicit an antibody reaction. Lions and tigers are not that far removed that this would happen before fertilisation occurs.

Answer 4

Mating, yes- anything can mate with anything else. Look up beastiality. As for having offspring, it probably could if there we enough trails done. No one would want to do it because it is inhuman and gross, but is probably somewhat genetically possible. No one really wants to think about that, but it is probably possible.
You can even mate a male camel and a female llama and get a cama, and they are very genetically different- still in the same family though. You cannot have a female camel and male llama though- it didn't work that way no matter how many trials they did.

Answer 5

homo sapien has progressed too far to have a viable child with a chimp. but if you look into archeology files, there was some evidence that early human species might have mated with the great apes. as to if there was children from that mating I don't think so. early early humans had more in common with the apes than with modern humans today.

Answer 6

Because our genomes are just too different to allow the egg and sperm to fuse and produce viable offspring. We all have a certain number and type of chromosomes, and similar sets are needed for them to be mixed and produce a working cell. A tiger and a lion have just similar enough chromosome types and numbers to produce offspring.

Think of it like computers. If you're running a PC, then Mac programs cannot run on a windows PC, just as human genes cannot work with chimp genes.

Answer 7

As with many things in science - it is possible but the moral implications of chimeras (fusing DNA together from different species to create a new one) is the real issue. From the source links below:

"" Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal *chimeras* successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells. Chimpanzees are much more like humans than rabbits. Still, the creation of *humanzees* might run into difficulties other than purely scientific ones. ""

There is alot more information related to human hybrids in the source links below, including various scientific methods for achieving this.

Having said this, at present I agree with most users - there is no viable reason for these kinds of experimentations, especially when we live in a world that is already destroying so many of the species that exist today. We do not know enough nor are responsible enough with the natural genome sets already inhabiting this world to begin the forced creation of frankensteins..
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Answer 8

I'm not sure on the exact genetics of humans and chimps, but though we're closely related, we may not be close enough. One may have extra chromosomes that wouldn't match up with the other.

Lions and tigers, horses and donkeys, and other animals that can reproduce with each other are obviously more closely related than humans and chimps, though their offspring are often sterile.

Answer 9

it all has to do with DNA and the similarities. people don't mate with chimps because it's inhumane and the offspring, if any, would be sterile jsut like cross-breeding of animals. I'm not sure how close lion's and tiger's DNA are but they are both felines that i'm wouldn't be surprised if someone tried to cross breed them. However since people are trying to protect both these species they probably won't temper with nature here.

Answer 10

Lion and tigers are both of the genus Panthera. Humans are genus Homo and chimpanzees are genus Pan. You have received other answers on the chromosome/genetic reasons why this match is not going to happen.