...and while you guys were discussing that, I was reading about humans being chimp X pig hybrids
For anyone who wants to read, it is an eight page discussion, starting here -
Human origins: Are we hybrids? - and basically (so to speak) he is saying that a male pig (specifically
Sus scrofa) mated with a female chimpanzee and then the resulting offspring bred back into the chimp population. For his argument he decides that several million years ago, chimps were found much further north and
S. scrofa much further south (and that also both species actually existed several million years ago....). To combat the objection that his comparisons rely heavily on the characteristics of
domestic pigs, he says at one point that perhaps there was a wild hairless pig which was domesticated by humans later, and that they aren't actually derived from wild
S. scrofa at all (he doesn't seem phased by his own contradictions). This isn't all however. He also goes on to argue (page seven) that gorillas are a more recent hybrid between chimp X giant forest hog but cleverly skirts around the obvious contradiction by saying that characteristics shown by a chimp X domestic pig wouldn't necessarily be shown by a chimp X different kind of pig! And
then he posits that the common chimp (i.e.
Pan troglodytes) is really the result of the "original" chimp (i.e. the bonobo
Pan paniscus) hybridising with the chimp X giant forest hog hybrid (i.e. the gorilla). So in fact, common chimps, gorillas, and humans are all hybrids and the only pure species is the bonobo.
Lots of other "interesting" stuff in there too, like a human X chicken hybrid. Yes, you read that correctly.
Many many instances of deformed babies (animal and human) being uncritically passed off as hybrids between two randomly-picked species.
There are also a lot of genuine hybrids discussed but man there's a lot of idiocy on there.
