Whether you’re a skeptic or a believer when it comes to reports of creatures like Bigfoot, one thing is for certain: mankind’s fascination with creatures that bridge the gap between humans and beasts has persisted for as long as we’ve been able to differentiate ourselves from what we label “the animal kingdom.” In the world today, stories constantly circulated in the paranormal community, as well as the various theories and arguments supporting existence of Bigfoot and other mystery primates, tend to detail this fascination in the modern sense.

Outside of specific references to Bigfoot and cryptozoology, the idea of the human-ape hybrid has been a reoccurring literary theme and reference in pop-culture throughout the last several decades, having appeared in everything from obscure stories by writers like H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Rice Burroughs, to popular films like Planet of the Apes. Although most fiction of this sort has little to do with any scientific probability that humans could be genetically similar enough to allow cross-breeding with other primates, it does illustrate an extension of man’s curiosity as to the great question of “what if”.

Richard Lydekker’s 1893 “Profile of a Chimpanzee.”

Since it is often the case that truth is stranger than fiction, I was not surprised today when I read that one scientist is arguing that our fascination alone with the subject “would be enough of a motive for scientists to try crossing the two species.” Dr Calum MacKellar, a director of research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, is warning us that “humanzees” created from inseminating female chimpanzees with human sperm, could leap from the realm of fiction and speculation into reality unless government provisions are made to prevent such experimentation.

As reported by The Scotsman on April 29, the controversy surrounds a draft Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill, where specific prohibition of “human sperm being inseminated into animals” is not given. Though the Scottish Department of Health has confirmed that the bill “does not cover the artificial insemination of an animal with human sperm”, one Department spokeswoman suggests that “it’s just not a problem. If you inseminate an animal with human sperm, scientifically nothing happens. The species barriers are too great.” Dr MacKellar argues just the opposite, and says that to suppose people won’t try these experiments merely because the probability of success is considered unlikely is the wrong idea.

In fact, MacKellar thinks scientists would be “very likely” to try such experiments, and even says he thinks it would be likely humans and chimps could successfully reproduce. “If you put human sperm into a frog it would probably create an embryo, but it probably wouldn’t go very far. But if you do it with a non-human primate it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that it could be born alive.”

In addition to the question of “if” it can be done, there is the ever present (and more controversial) question of ethics. If a “humanzee” were to be created, is it a man or a beast? How would it react to those around it? Would it have a conscience? Would we really know unless we tried to breed the two species in the first place… or is that simply going too far?

Reports of alleged human-chimpanzee hybrids being birthed date all the way back to the 11th century, where in his De bono religiosi status et variorum animatium tropologia St. Peter Damian describes a Count Gulielmus who obtained an ape which he kept as a pet. According to legend, the chimpanzee became the lover of the countess, and one day after finding she and Gulielmus making love it became “mad with jealousy”, upon which it attacked and killed him. Allegedly, Pope Alexander II had not only related this incident to Damian, but had also shown him a “creature” named Maimo, which was introduced as the lovechild of the countess and the ape, though many believe Maimo may have been a child with some degree of brain damage or other functional disorder.

The most famous (or infamous) reports of deliberate induced pregnancies with the intention of creating hybrids of this sort concerns the Soviet biologist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov and his experiments with interspecific hybridization of animals. Around 1926, Russian dictator Joseph Stalin reportedly told Ivanov that he wanted “a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat.” Ivanov had in fact been working to secure funding for such experiments much earlier, having given a presentation to the World Congress of Zoologists in Graz in 1910, where he described how one might obtain such a hybrid by “inducing pregnancy”, or using artificial insemination. Seeing that Stalin’s desire for creating a super-human army combatant might aid his requests for support, he leaped at the opportunity.

NOT A HYBRID: Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, hybridization specialist known for his controversial studies, as well as the painfully-Russian repetition of “Ivan” throughout his name.

In his initial experiments, Ivanov attempted to inseminate chimpanzees with human sperm in three instances, all of which failed. This led him to consider the alternative approach; inseminating a human woman with sperm from a dead chimpanzee, with the stipulation that the “host” woman knew what was occurring. In the spring of 1929, Ivanov received support for his experiment from the Society of Materialist Biologists, and it was decided that the studies would be carried out at a new primate facility at the Abkhazian capital of Sukhumi with at least five women willing to undergo the study. However, the experiments were delayed by the death of his last orangutan suitor, and with increasing political pressures that ensued, Ivanov was exiled to Alma Ata, where he would die before ever completing the study.

Similar reports have been uncovered having to do with facilities in Italy during wartime, as well as in China in the 1960s. One compelling case allegedly took place in the United States in the 1920s, as reported by University at Albany psychologist Gordon Gallup who told of a human-chimp hybrid that “was successfully engendered and born at the old Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Orange Park, Florida in the 1920s”, and “destroyed” afterward by participating scientists. Another interesting report featured in issue 44 of National Vanguard magazine in 1976 described a “man of sorts” who some claimed was also a ape-human hybrid. “Bassou”, as he was called, ”lives in the Valley of Dades, near the town of Skoura, in Morocco. He sleeps in the trees there and subsists on dates, berries, and insects. He wears no clothes, uses no tools, and speaks only in grunts.”

“Bassou” the Morroccan Ape Man, as featured on this German Website.  

Stories like these have lead some researchers, including author Paul Stonehill, to suppose that such instances might lend credence to reports of Bigfoot-like creatures, even suggesting that some cryptids may be the result of hybrid experimentation. With this in mind, how might hybridization lend itself to the argument regarding other cryptid creatures? Human-ape hybrids are already a dead ringer for Bigfoot, since the offspring of two unique species are often larger and more fit than their parents (for instance, a liger, produced by cross-breeding a male lion with a female tiger, is the largest known cat in existence today). If the same could be expected from a human-chimpanzee union, one might anticipate the offspring to be much larger also. Along these lines, it seems noteworthy to mention that this would be contrary to smaller purported “humanzees” from the past, like the famous case of Oliver, who was later proven to be only a chimp who walked upright (though an odd looking one, for certain)!

What other cryptozoological mysteries might hybridization shed a bit of light on? For instance, consider Chupacabras, mystery canines, Alien big Cats (ABCs), or even lake monsters; could it actually be that some of our “cryptids” might turn out be unidentified hybrids of known animals?