MEXICO CITY, Mexico.- Russian biologist Iliá Ivanovich Ivanov was a master in the field of animal hybridization and artificial insemination. He conducted several experiments to create mongrel animals, such as the zedonk (a hybrid of zebra and donkey) and a guinea pig-mouse.
However, among all his peculiar experiments, his proposal for an ape man (human-chimpanzee hybrid) was the most sensational and controversial of his career.
Ivanov first proposed the idea of the humanzee in 1910, at the World Congress of Zoologists held in Graz, Australia. In his presentation, he stated that one day it would be possible to create hybrids between humans and their closest relatives, through artificial insemination. At the time, this idea was nothing more than speculation, but that would change after the Russian revolution of 1917.
In 1924, Ivanov presented his proposals for a human-chimpanzee hybridization experiment to the government before the government’s Financial Commission. Although the scientific community did not agree, Ivanov obtained approval of his work and funding of $10,000 “for the realization of Professor II Ivanov’s scientific work on the hybridization of anthropoid apes in Africa.”
The documents indicate that the decision was promoted by prominent members of the Bolshevik government.
insemination
Ivanov left for Africa in 1926. He arrived in Guinea at the end of March, but none of the Institute’s chimpanzees were mature enough to reproduce. In November, Ivanov returned to try again.
Despite efforts, his experiments in French Guinea failed. None of the chimpanzees conceived.
However, this failure did not weaken Ivanov’s will to create an ape man, but he came up with a new idea, in which he intended to fertilize a human female with the sperm of a male chimpanzee. Ivanov headed home with an assortment of chimpanzees to supply a new ape “nursery” in the subtropical Soviet Republic of Abkhazia.
When Ivanov returned to Africa, he was able to fertilize three chimpanzees with human sperm but was unsuccessful. He tried to inseminate African women with orangutan semen, but the French authorities prohibited it because it would be done without the women’s consent or knowledge.
At least five Russian women volunteered for the strange experiment. But the apes Ivanov had brought along did not thrive in an unfamiliar environment, and in 1929, when Ivanov was ready to move on, the only adult male left was Tarzan, a 26-year-old orangutan who suffered a brain hemorrhage and died.
The purge of scientists under Stalin’s regime
In 1930, new apes were about to arrive at the facilities, but before that Ivanov was a victim of the widespread purge of Soviet scientists and was exiled to Kazakhstan.
Ivanov’s story is told in letters, notebooks and diaries scattered in government archives consulted after the breakup of the USSR.
However, none of the preserved documents reveal why it was decided to do the ape-men experiment, as the historian Alexander Etkind wrote.
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2024-05-11 21:43:33
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