eli5 if horses can breed with donkeys and goats can mate with sheep why can’t we make human / ape cross overs?
In: 5
Horses and donkeys are very close relatives, close enough that the chromosomal mismatch isn’t catastrophic.
Humans have no sufficiently close relatives, the other hominid lineages died out or got hybridized back in a long time ago.
The great apes are our closest living relatives, but they’re not *that* close anymore. It’s been at least 7 million years since the common ancestor.
Latest Answers