Human evolution result of chimpanzee-pig interspecies mating

New research claims that humans may be the product of pig-chimpanzee interspecies mating at some point in our evolutionary history. Some scientists aren't convinced.

Future family gatherings may soon grow even more complicated: According to a thesis posted on Macroevolution.net, University of Georgia geneticist Eugene McCarthy proposes that that humans only came into being after a pig mated with a chimpanzee. While humans have long been linked to chimpanzees, pigs are a previously unforeseen addition to the Homo Sapiens family tree.

The link may not come as such a great surprise to some, as pig skin and other organs have had a place in human medical treatments for years. Pigs are also often used as analogs for human carcasses because of their similar composition and density. According to McCarthy, our similarities with pigs don’t end there. Hairless skin, large eyelashes, protruding noses are all things we share in common with pigs.

“What is this other animal that has all these traits?’ he asks rhetorically. ‘The answer is Sus scrofa, the ordinary pig.”

According to McCarthy, humans only came into being after a pig mated with a chimpanzee. He claims the taboo interspecies tryst would have come at some point long ago in our evolutionary history. Based on his theory, humans are probably the result of multiple generations of backcrossing to chimpanzees, which in nucleotide sequence data comparisons would effectively mask any contribution from pig. Generally speaking, interspecies hybrids—like mules, ligers (lion-tiger hybrids), or zedonks (zebra-donkey hybrids)—are less fertile than the parents that produced them. However, as McCarthy has documented in his years of research into hybrids, many crosses produce hybrids that can produce offspring themselves.

The mechanics most likely involved a male boar or pig mating with a female chimpanzee, with the offspring raised and nurtured by the chimp mother. The theory isn’t as unlikely as it may seem, given that there is evidence that suggests that the origin of the gorilla may be best explained by hybridization with the forest hog, which shares the same habitat and man uncommon physical traits and habits.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, McCarthy’s claim has invited its fair share of criticism from the scientific community. Some suggest that such a union between pigs and chimps would be impossible. According to Science blogger P.Z. Myers, “Hybridizing a pig and a chimp is like taking half the dancers from a performance of Swan Lake and the other half from a performance of Giselle and throwing them together on stage to assemble something. It’s going to be a catastrophe.” Several scientists have suggested that McCarthy attempt to produce a living hybrid to add credence to his theory, an idea he has rejected on humanitarian grounds.

The jury is still out on whether or not ham remains an acceptable holiday entre option.