Xref: utzoo talk.bizarre:12146 misc.legal:4745 talk.politics.misc:9697 talk.origins:1472 sci.bio:1159 Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!mtunx!mtune!petsd!pedsga!lae From: lae@pedsga.UUCP Newsgroups: talk.bizarre,misc.legal,talk.politics.misc,talk.origins,sci.bio Subject: Re: Are Animals Patentable? Message-ID: <564@pedsga.UUCP> Date: 29 Apr 88 17:43:34 GMT References: <97500013@prism> <4872@xanth.cs.odu.edu> <9915@tekecs.TEK.COM> <3447@gryphon.CTS.COM> <2924@saturn.ucsc.edu> Reply-To: lae@pedsga.UUCP (Leslie Ann Ellis) Distribution: na Organization: Closet Philosophers Society Lines: 50 Keywords: chromosomes chimpanzee privet hedge In article <2924@saturn.ucsc.edu> kevin@chromo.UUCP writes: >I can't fix cars, and I find this remark a slander against the >intelligence of people with the ability to do so. That doesn't mean you're not capable of learning how! And then again, What if the animals simply AREN'T INTERESTED in learning to do such things? >And there's no need to get melodramatic a' la Jeremy Rifkin. >Such an animal probably exists now. It's called a chimpanzee. >In fact, an even more perfect such creature could easily exist >without any fancy genetic manipulation at all. As someone above mentioned, >humans share 99% of our genetic material with chimps--we're >closer than sheep and goats, closer than horses and donkeys--and >you know what happens when you mate a horse with a donkey. >A mule is sterile, but it IS a real creature, and it's neither clearly >a horse nor clearly a donkey; it has characteristics of both. >Susan Nordmark Someone correct if I'm wrong, but I believe that humans have 46 chromosomes, vs. 48 in the chimpanzee. This may provide insurmountable problems as far as interbreeding, though some die-hards may continue to try. :-P I seem to recall from my Physical Anthropology course that speciation is defined as occuring when the parts of a population that become physically isolated from each other either: 1) Can no longer breed successfully, or 2) Produce sterile offspring. This means that the horse and donkey are separate species since the offspring (except that one in Wyoming or somewhere that someone mentioned in an earlier article) are sterile. Different breeds of dogs are, however, still the same species. The same with different races of humans, no matter what thesays. I also read somewhere that the only known species on the planet sharing the human characteristic of having 46 chromosomes is... the privet hedge. Kind of makes sense, doesn't it? Leslie -- ******************************************************************* * Kent for President. The Stars are our Birthright! * * Join us at USEnet:news.talk.bizarre. * *******************************************************************