A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans? • Hacker News Board

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#71

Post by croisillon » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 9:31 AM UTC

ronaldx wrote: post #28

malkia wrote: post #22

What's the different between hybrids and breeds (as in dogs for example)?

A simple way to define a 'species' is any group of creatures that can produce viable, fertile offspring. So dogs are breeds - they're part of the same species - because if you mate a great dane with a chihuahua, you'll get a fertile dog (I believe; if you plan to experiment, I recommend the chihuahua is male and great dane is female). If you're lucky, that dog will have desirable characteristics that may one day end…

Your remark "I recommend the chihuahua is male and great dane is female" is interesting, but how true is it? Has anyone experience? Is it harder for a small female dog to bear puppies from a big male dog?

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#72

Post by eshvk » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 10:39 AM UTC

twstws wrote: post #16

thelibrarian wrote: post #6

There's at least one fairly well-know biology professor/blogger who is unimpressed with what he dubs the "MFAP" hypothesis: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/02/the-mfap-h...

The thing I find most depressing about these crackpots is that some otherwise productive scientist has to spend an evening debunking their nonsense. And it still doesn't stop. I taught evolution for undergrads, and occasionally had to deal with these issues from students. It takes time to look into them, and no matter how thoroughly debunked the theory, some kids find them too irresistible to let go of. It undermines…

> some kids find them too irresistible to let go of. It undermines real education in the end.

Teaching is not my cup of tea but isn't an important life lesson teaching kids how to smell bullshit? If they can do that, surely they will know what books to pick and what to learn.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#73

Post by bencollier49 » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 10:53 AM UTC

eshvk wrote: post #72

twstws wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I find most depressing about these crackpots is that some otherwise productive scientist has to spend an evening debunking their nonsense. And it still doesn't stop. I taught evolution for undergrads, and occasionally had to deal with these issues from students. It takes time to look into them, and no matter how thoroughly debunked the theory, some kids find them too irresistible to let go of. It undermines…

> some kids find them too irresistible to let go of. It undermines real education in the end. Teaching is not my cup of tea but isn't an important life lesson teaching kids how to smell bullshit? If they can do that, surely they will know what books to pick and what to learn.

Agree. Debunking this sort of thing would be a fabulous way of describing all manner of genetic principles, particularly the structure of chromosomes, recombination hotspots and haplotypes.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#74

Post by sottomayor » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 11:03 AM UTC

Geee wrote: post #11

Extremely interesting. I suggest you to read the article at http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html The author seems to be a well-established scientist, and the arguments are quite plausible, given that this level of hybridization actually could be possible. What I find amazing (based on the article) is that hybridization hasn't really been researched very well, and that hybrids aren't actually infertile, on…

>The author seems to be a well-established scientist

Stopped reading there. 'Consensus science' isn't science.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#75

Post by tome » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 11:04 AM UTC

duncan_bayne wrote: post #2

My gut feel is that this is bat-shit crazy, but wouldn't it be amusing to see the response from the Jewish and Islamic world should it turn out that humans are pig hybrids? ;)

Certain Islamic radicals have called Jews the "descendants of apes and pigs". Perhaps these radicals are just excellent evolutionary biologists.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#76

Post by thotpoizn » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 11:24 AM UTC

hetman wrote: post #34

While the hypothesis itself seems rather unlikely, I think the evidence is interesting enough that further investigation would certainly yield some interesting results in their own right. Major leaps in scientific thinking can often start with some pretty radical albeit erroneous ideas. But even if not true, these ideas can encourage a fresh perspective and a new approach for teasing apart the observable world.

This. It seems pointless to me to proceed with so much hand wringing and "my science-peen is bigger than yours" posturing, when we have ample opportunities (and plenty of pigs and bonobos) to test the hypothesis via experiment. Isn't that sort of the next step in a fairly tried-and-true method many here are usually quite fond of?

Personally I think the odds of any meaningful success are extremely low, but the cost to explore and experiment are also quite low. I'd rather trust "we attempted insemination of {x} bonobos with {y} varieties of pig sperm, but failed to achieve impregnation" (... or succeeded, or whatever) - over "I'm really smart, and trust me - this couldn't possibly work."

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#77

Post by jhewitt123 » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 11:38 AM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #52

Gah. Another crap submission from PhysOrg. This has been going on so long that many HN participants have called that out as a bad source before. PhysOrg appears to have been banned as a site to submit from by Reddit (according to what I've read here on HN). I learned from other participants here on HN that there are better sites to submit from. Comments about PhysOrg: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077869 "Yes…

I think each submission should be judged on its own merit. HN might do better to ban crap comments like yours

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#78

Post by sageikosa » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 11:39 AM UTC

dougk16 wrote: post #50

sageikosa wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that those pigs and chimps that try to interbreed and fail would be wasting time and resources and end up falling behind in fecundity to their "breed true" cousins. Evolution would disfavor such behaviors as they would represent a vanishingly small percentage of the their respective gene pools.

Unless, perhaps, both particular species of ape and pig routinely had sex for pleasure ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sexual_behaviour suggests it's possible), and just happened to cross paths. In this case, they're not really wasting resources as they would have been having non-reproductive sex anyway.

It's not just the "casual" contact time; for females, they would very often be wasting a reproductive cycle on a fetus that would (in the statistically significant majority of cases) self-abort.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#79

Post by sageikosa » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 12:02 PM UTC

jvm wrote: post #9

Hybridization is actually a pretty interesting hypothesis for species differentiation in higher vertebrates, given that generations are often very long, hindering traditional accounts of evolution-through-mutation.

Recombination occurs very time a new sex cell is produced during the crossing over event, Dawkins dispels the random mutation as the only means of genetic shift very early in his book "The Selfish Gene" as the crossing over process can split chromosomes mid-gene for longer, more complex DNA sequences.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#80

Post by GuiA » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #44

GuiA wrote: post #10

"These days, getting a Ph.D. is probably the last thing you want to do if you are out to revolutionize the world. If, however, what you propose is an idea, rather than a technology, it can still be a valuable asset to have." Man, those newspapers' opening lines are getting worse and worse...

Phys.org ain't a newspaper.

That's the joke :)