Cross breeding humans and animals?

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Popestar, Jun 1, 2007.

  1. Popestar Registered Member

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    this may sound stupid but i would just like to know a basic few things....why is it that say a dog can not become impregnated with a human or cat baby

    also say is it possible to say somehow cross breed say a dog and a cat or a turtle and a human and stuff like this, like through dna or something?? government would consider it inhumane so thats obviously why it hasn't really been done unless the government themselves are doing it, but what would you have to do to cross breed to different species?
     
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  3. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    try googling for crossbreed flowers perhaps you'l find a couple of tricks to legally practice at home while perhaps learning the basics.

    ... I did believe that some Russian nutter worked on creating a hybrid during the cold war
    http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jun2000/961007568.Ge.r.html

    personaly the ID of recreating extinct specieses seems ...stupid unless it's to produce a certain usefull enzyme or a transplantable organe or something that survives the hard conditions on mars or something.
     
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  5. Killjoy Propelling The Farce!! Valued Senior Member

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    It's already been done -
    Human-Animal Chimeras

    Irving Weissman of Stanford University and his colleagues pioneered these chimera experiments in 1988 when they created mice with fully human immune systems for the study of AIDS. Later, the Stanford group and StemCells, Inc., which Weissman co-founded, also transplanted human stem cells into the brains of newborn mice as preliminary models for neural research. And working with foetal sheep, Esmail Zanjani of the University of Nevada at Reno has created adult animals with human cells integrated throughout their body.


    Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy

    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.

    In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

    And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.


    Although none of the things have been allowed to be born, apparently.

    You know that's gotta next on sombebody's agenda.
     
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  7. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    it would be more fun tough if someone could recreate some Dingo's and dodo's. Then if they would create some resident evil like freak. Mouse with human brains... that yust can't turn out right

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  8. fishtail Registered Senior Member

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    I am sure i saw an article picturing a rat with a human ear growing on its back, or was that sci fi?
     
  9. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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  10. fishtail Registered Senior Member

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    eewwwwwwww, cool.
     
  11. Rane Registered Member

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    I have an idea on how to create human animal hybrids although its compicated at the simplest. The process they use to create insulin, take it and apply it to a fertilised human egg with animal genes. Theoreticly the cells will make say a dogs ear instead of a human ear. For every part you want replaced just do so. I realise that my idea is greatly flawed because i have no education in this process other than a 9th grade bio class. If anyone has more information or ideas i would love to hear 'em. ~Dan~
     
  12. Skeptical Registered Senior Member

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    1,449
    In theory, genetic modification techniques can be used to implant working animal genes in a human zygote, and the resulting child will grow up with those animal characteristics expressed. The ethics are seriously dubious.

    Chimeras are not really quite what the OP was discussing, I don't think.

    A real human/animal hybrid? If you try to google attempts to cross breed a human and animal (I have) you get numerous porno sites! Zoophilia is not uncommon, and so we can say the attempt has been made - often! Not one hybrid offspring has ever resulted. So I think I can say with reasonable likelihood of being correct that no animal plus human hybrid is viable.
     
  13. ScaryMonster I’m the whispered word. Valued Senior Member

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    What about combining animal DNA with human? Will athletes have cheetah gene’s implanted into there leg muscles so they can run faster?
     
  14. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Two species have to be very closely related in order for their chromosomes to be so compatible that they can join and create a live animal. (Or plant, or any other type of lifeform that reproduces sexually.) Generally they have to be members of the same genus. This is why a wolf, Canis lupus, and a coyote, Canis latrans, can mate and have viable offspring. Or a lion, Panthera leo, and a tiger, Panthera tigris, although it's almost impossible for them to arouse each other and trigger the urge to copulate so it has to be done by artificial insemination. Horses and donkeys, bison and cattle, scarlet macaws and greenwing macaws, black-headed grosbeaks and rose-breasted grosbeaks--it's always the same: two species within the same genus can crossbreed and produce live offspring. (I have vastly oversimplified but let's just call this Lesson One and say that it's about 98% correct.)

    The problem with trying to hybridize humans with another species is there is no other species within our genus. Homo is a genus with only one species. (There's a name for that, mono-something-or-other, but I can't remember it.) The last time modern humans were able to hybridize with another species was about 25,000 years ago, when Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis, still existed. And yes, we did hybridize with them, the DNA evidence was discovered just this year.

    In the interest of full disclosure, there have been occasional instances of animals being able to crossbreed despite being members of different genera. The blue-and-gold macaw with the hyacinthine macaw, for example. They are members of two different genera within the same family and their DNA just happens to be compatible. But this is very rare. (This is in Lesson Two, as I noted earlier.) It's far more common that two species in the same genus cannot hybridize. (It has to do with number of chromosomes and a bunch of other stuff, and since it goes beyond my knowledge of biology, it's not in Lesson Two.

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    In any case, there are only five other species in the other genera within the family our species belongs to: the two species of chimpanzee, the two species of gorilla and the one species of orangutan. Their DNA has been examined in minute detail, and there's no way we could hybridize with one of them.

    So the answer is that no other animal can crossbreed with a human because their chromosomes are not compatible with ours.
    There's no way to literally crossbreed humans with any other species. We can't take a sperm cell from one and an egg cell from another, put them together in the right environment, and watch them merge into a zygote. As far as the human sperm cell is concerned, that foreign egg cell might as well be a sesame seed or a golf ball. It doesn't recognize it and doesn't have the capability to merge with it. End of story.

    All we can do is splice individual genes into a sperm or an egg. Other members have discussed that at length in this thread. That isn't hybridization in the original meaning of the word, because it is not the result of a mating, even an artificial mating. It's really genetic engineering. The ethical questions you're wondering about have been raised in the discipline of genetic engineering, and they're still being sorted out. Many countries don't allow genetically modified crops to cross their borders--and those aren't even animals, much less people.
    There's so much more to it than that. In order for the muscle to pump the leg faster, it has to have a thicker cross section so it can deliver more energy. But you're going to run into a limit on that type of expansion, because if you pump the legs much faster than they go now, it's going to increase the wear and tear on the joints where the rotation takes place and they won't hold up under the abuse. So in addition to thicker muscles, you're going to have to make the legs longer so one stride covers more ground. Now you're raising the pelvis further off the ground.

    The human pelvis is an amazing piece of engineering, and if you start messing with it you're going to have to go back to the drawing board. The birth canal has to be wide enough for our enormous heads to slip through. This puts our hips much farther apart than other animals of comparable size, so when we walk or run we're performing a weight transfer from one leg to the other that spans considerable distance. Because we also have the ability to lock our knees for bipedal walking, this weight transfer requires enormous balancing muscles. Notice that no other animal has a gluteus maximus (the twin hemisperical muscles that shape our butt) like ours.

    All of that will have to be redesigned. Cheetah DNA won't do it because cheetahs are quadrupeds. In fact, we're the only full-time bipedal mammal. You're going to have to invent your own genes!
     
  15. TheTruth101 Registered Member

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    hehh

    First off, we are already Animals, we belong to the family Hominidae, which includes, chimpanzees, gorillas, humans, and orangutans.
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae

    We may be evolving into something totally different, but we are still a major % of animal. We probably have more evolved humans looking down at us/aliens, the exact way we look down at other animals right now, when we still have so far to go, evolution wise, but that is another topic.

    anyways, as far as crossing species of animals that are not closely related, goodluck!!
    the closest you might get is Human / chimpanzee, since our dna is almost exact.......other then that, keep dreaming.
     
  16. TheTruth101 Registered Member

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    Lolllllllll


    LOL!!!!!!!!!

    The cheetahs speed comes from the way its body is designed in a whole.

    the human body is not designed to run at that high of a speed, and no leg muscle would change it, it would actually slow a human down.
    plus a cheetahs dna is not the blueprint for leg muscle, its the blueprint for a cheetah..................
     
  17. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    There are six Kingdoms of living things: Animals, Plants, Fungi, Algae, Bacteria and Protists. We are definitely animals. Animals are characterized by the following combination of traits:
    • Multicellular.
    • Eukaryotic: Our cells contain complex structures within their membranes.
    • Heterotropic: We digest our food inside a special-purpose chamber.
    • Our cell walls are not rigid.
    • Motile: We have the ability to move actively and spontaneously
    This combination distinguishes animals from the other five categories of lifeforms, and we have this combination. Humans are animals. The alternative would be to be a plant, a fungus, etc., and we clearly do not belong to any of those other kingdoms.
    • Kingdom: Animals
    • Phylum: Chordates
    • Class: Mammals
    • Order: Primates
    • Family: Great Apes
    • Genus: Humans
    • Species: Modern humans, the only surviving species in this genus.
     
  18. TheTruth101 Registered Member

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    How come you quoted me, when we had the same conclusion humans are already animals ?
     

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