Why can’t a monkey impregnate a human (and vice versa)?
In: Biology
A simple way of thinking about this is to just be cognizant of all of the problems that can arise from two humans procreating in the most normal and healthy circumstances. There are countless problems that can occur within a single species. Now try to imagine a scenario where different species, whose genetic lineage diverged millions of years ago, and has evolved separately for millions of years. They are just too different to be recombined.
A good analogy would languages. Romance languages are derived from Latin, so several thousand years ago, two people could speak Latin with each other no problem. As time went on, slowly Latin started evolving into French, Italian, Spanish etc. So today, someone speaking Spanish cannot understand someone speaking French, even though both languages have a common lineage.
Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes and other great apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes. That’s enough to cause crossing to fail.
In comparison, Horses and Donkeys are 64 and 62, and a hinny crossbreed has 63 causing it to be sterile.
The simplest answer I think is that we are not the same species. We may have come from a type of ape/monkey in the very distant past, but evolution has separated our genes (or characteristics) far too much to make our species and theirs have babies.
It’s worth mentioning that we know humans mated with neanderthals, and that most Europeans have a bit of neanderthal DNA. Their chromosomes were compatible with ours because they were much more closely related. Modern apes are too far removed from us.
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