humans share a lot of traits with sheep as well! — Janus

Very true, but those are just psychological traits. And that's easily explained by separate convergent evolution. Obedient sheep are chosen for breeding more sheep. Obedient humans who follow and identify with the powerful thereby gain favor and protection that increases their survivability, reproduction-opportunities, and the societal status and protection for their offspring.

Michael Ossipoff

13 Tu
0256 UTC

Yeah, you know, I was joking....

It's just really unlikely. Really, really. — T Clark

Of course it's unlikely. Maybe often no offspring. And when there is, nearly always stillbirth or offspring that soon dies.

But, very, very rarely (just as the case with cosmic-ray mutations, ground radon irradiation mutation, environmental mutagen mutation) there could be that very, very rare instance where the two species just happened to have separate unshared attributes which, when combined, confer adaptive advantage.

So, distant hibridizations aren't a recipe for reliably successful offspring, any more than irradiation by cosmic rays or radon, or exposure to environmental mutagens, are. ...but are, instead, just one more source of mutation. ...nearly always fatal, but, very very rarely, adaptively advantageous.

Michael Ossipoff

13 Tu
0303 UTC

Yeah, you know, I was joking.... — Janus

Of course. But what you said is still true--though easily explained by separate convergent evolution,.

Michael Ossipoff

13 Tu
0306 UTC

And that's easily explained by separate convergent evolution. — Michael Ossipoff

Convergent evolution is also the big problem for this hypothesis though. Since convergent evolution can only be ruled out via molecular and genetic evidence and all such evidence has been eradicated in the scenario proposed, there is no way rule out convergent evolution.

Which leaves us with a massively complex theory stacking improbabilities that does not have any predictive power, nor is it more general than the accepted version. In other words, we have a bad theory.

Which leaves us with a massively complex theory stacking improbabilities that does not have any predictive power, nor is it more general than the accepted version. In other words, we have a bad theory. — Echarmion

yes maybe it boils down to 'pictures or it didn't happen' ! :D

I started reading, but it was too long, and I couldn't find the answer to the question I was looking for.

My understanding of hybrids is that they are formed when species X breaks off into two groups as the result of geographical isolation and after considerable time they evolve separately. Following the separation, they are reunited, they breed, and they produce a hybrid. So, the idea would be that you have horses, some get isolated and they turn into donkeys, the two find each other one day and they make mules. This assumes a common ancestor. It holds that species X forms subspecies Y that breeds into XY.

This article seems to suggest that a primitive man fucked a pig that created a pig centaur and that pig centaur is us. Do I have this right? If that's what the author is suggesting, that's different than saying there was primitive man where one went left and one went right and the direction right one became more a primate and the direction left one became more a pig, and the two eventually reunited to form the current day us.

Why not say (since this is wildly speculative anyway) that pigs and man had a common ancestor, with some becoming pigs and others becoming @Baden? That's the current model of evolution as it applies to primates, where we claim a common ancestor, as opposed to our saying we bred with monkeys and today we're just monkey hybrids, right?

I don't get the need to interpose hybridization into this mess, when all we really need to say is that there appears to be a common genetic similarity that likely arose from a common ancestor.

This article seems to suggest that a man fucked a pig that created a pig centaur and that pig centaur is us. Do I have this right? — Hanover

I think it is suggesting that boars and monkeys met like ships in the night, ..a long time ago, and the offspring were hybrids, that later became human.

I think it is suggesting that boars and monkeys met like ships in the night, ..a long time ago, and the offspring were hybrids, that later became human. — wax

But doesn't that ignore the fact that the ability for different species to mate usually occurs only because the two already shared a historical genetic bond, as in the case of donkeys and horses?

But doesn't that ignore the fact that the ability for different species to mate usually occurs only because the two already shared a historical genetic bond, as in the case of donkeys and horses? — Hanover

maybe the two never really separated that much...I posted a video of monkeys using boars as a kind of taxi service, so maybe the hybridizing goes back a long way....might explain the behaviour of some taxi drivers... :D

Charitably assuming this is a joke and moving to the lounge.

Bugs and Tom getting it on.

http://www.macroevolution.net/cat-rabbit-hybrids.html

Convergent evolution is also the big problem for this hypothesis though. Since convergent evolution can only be ruled out via molecular and genetic evidence and all such evidence has been eradicated in the scenario proposed, there is no way rule out convergent evolution.

.
All of the attributes by which humans differ from all of the other primates--and by which all the other primates are like eachother—are attributes that humans and pigs have in common.
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Pigs and hominids had and have quite different lifestyles and modes of living. With apes as our immediate ancestors, the fact mentioned in the above paragraph calls for explanation. For all those attributes mentioned above to be convergent-evolution would amount to a humungous set of coincidences.
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Which leaves us with a massively complex theory stacking improbabilities

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See above.
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Michael Ossipoff
.
13 Tu
1708 UTC

http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2018/02/1958-eugene-m-mccarthy.html?m=1

"Eugene M. McCarthy (no known relation) is a pseudo-evolutionary crackpot biologist famous for his completely ridiculous crackpot idea that “humans evolved after a female chimpanzee mated with a pig”
...
"More recently, McCarthy has expanded on his hypothesis and claimed that humans have hybridized with chickens*, dogs, apes, goats, cows, and turtles. His “evidence” is based on mythological accounts (satyrs are evidence of goat-human hybrids, for instance), and imaginative interpretations of stories of women who had grossly deformed stillborn babies with peculiarly warped features.

Diagnosis: Another fine example of pure pseudoscience: Formulate a hypothesis that superficially fits certain pieces of data you’d like to fit together, ignore the vast amount of contradicting evidence, never test it, and maintain it with dogmatic rigor no matter what falsifying evidence might come your way. One might be inclined to believe that McCarthy is also completely harmless, but his work – given the media exposure – has been actively used to try to undermine the legitimacy of real science, so whatever influence he has is certainly not benign."

* http://www.macroevolution.net/human-chicken-hybrids.html

Edit: I see @frank posted this link already.

My understanding of hybrids is that they are formed when species X breaks off into two groups as the result of geographical isolation and after considerable time they evolve separately. Following the separation, they are reunited, they breed, and they produce a hybrid.
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So, the idea would be that you have horses, some get isolated and they turn into donkeys, the two find each other one day and they make mules. This assumes a common ancestor. It holds that species X forms subspecies Y that breeds into XY.

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No, hybridization refers to interbreeding of different species, not different subspecies of the same species.
.

This article seems to suggest that a primitive man fucked a pig that created a pig centaur and that pig centaur is us. Do I have this right?

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No, and I suggest that you read some of McCarthy’s pages before expounding about what he says.
.

I don't get the need to interpose hybridization into this mess, when all we really need to say is that there appears to be a common genetic similarity that likely arose from a common ancestor.

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Undeniably there was common ancestor. Likewise, just like us, all of the apes share that common ancestor too. So the common ancestor doesn’t explain the ape-human differences described in McCarthy’s page entitled “Human Origins”, which are also the human-pig similarities described in McCarthy’s page titled “The Other Parent”.
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Michael Ossipoff
.
13 Tu
1740 UTC

All of the attributes by which humans differ from all of the other primates--and by which all the other primates are like eachother—are attributes that humans and pigs have in common. — Michael Ossipoff

Aren't you forgetting rather significant attributes like a significantly increased brain volume?

Pigs and hominids had and have quite different lifestyles and modes of living. With apes as our immediate ancestors, the fact mentioned in the above paragraph calls for explanation. For all those attributes mentioned above to be convergent-evolution would amount to a humungous set of coincidences. — Michael Ossipoff

There is a fairly large amount of readily available evidence for similarly "humongous set(s) of coincidences" occurring. Convergent evolution is well documented. What evidence is there for the alternative?

"Eugene M. McCarthy (no known relation) is a pseudo-evolutionary crackpot biologist famous for his completely ridiculous crackpot idea that “humans evolved after a female chimpanzee mated with a pig”
...
"More recently, McCarthy has expanded on his hypothesis and claimed that humans have hybridized with chickens*, dogs, apes, goats, cows, and turtles. His “evidence” is based on mythological accounts (satyrs are evidence of goat-human hybrids, for instance), and imaginative interpretations of stories of women who had grossly deformed stillborn babies with peculiarly warped features.

Diagnosis: Another fine example of pure pseudoscience: Formulate a hypothesis that superficially fits certain pieces of data you’d like to fit together, ignore the vast amount of contradicting evidence, never test it, and maintain it with dogmatic rigor no matter what falsifying evidence might come your way. One might be inclined to believe that McCarthy is also completely harmless, but his work – given the media exposure – has been actively used to try to undermine the legitimacy of real science, so whatever influence he has is certainly not benign." — Baden

Is that supposed to be a disproof of the theory? A blog post written by an anonymous individual, who finds the idea ridiculous, and who lies about what McCarthy has actually said?

As an example McCarthy doesn't claim that humans have hybridized with such animals, but that it is possible, which is a scientific claim, while claiming that it is impossible is not.

History is full of strange ideas that were ridiculed and rejected only to become mainstream later on, but hey surely we have learnt from history and we won't make the mistake again, if the idea sounds ridiculous and goes against the mainstream then surely it must be false, because the majority of scientists can't ever be wrong again.

The idea is so ridiculous and so wrong in so many ways, and insultingly wrong to anyone with any background or understanding of the field, it's almost not worth explaining to anyone who takes it seriously. It's like asking someone with a good knowledge of history to prove WWII actually happened. But anyhow, seeing as you seem to give it credence, (on what basis I don't know) here is some of the basic detail of why it's wrong:

"As anyone who remembers the early days of molecular phylogeny knows, one of the oldest techniques for telling how closely related two animals are is to attempt to hybridize their DNA. Human and chimp DNA hybridizes easily in a test tube, since it’s roughly 98% the same. Other primates don’t hybridize as well, since they share fewer common alleles with us. Long ago, the early DNA hybridization studies showed that pigs and primates have very few alleles in common, about the same as primates share with any other distantly related order of placental mammals. As both P.Z. Myers and “Artiofab” pointed out in recent blogs, however, there are huge problems hybridizing pigs and chimps. Pigs have 38 chromosomes, chimps have 48. You simply can’t have a fertile hybrid with this many mismatched chromosomes. Even human/chimp hybrids are impossible for the same reason, because we have different numbers of chromosomes. And huge sections of chimp and pig DNA are radically different, so even if he did manage to separate the strands in a lab and hybridize them, they would not continue to develop. Then there’s the problem with the sperm of pigs even recognizing the ovum of a chimp, since the eggs have their own protein coats that are specific to their species, and prevent insemination from alien sperm. In addition, there’s the problem with immunological rejection: any tissue that is foreign to us is attacked by antibodies before it can get very far. This is why transplants of organs between species is very difficult. (Immune rejection is the reason for the failure of creationist Leonard Bailey’s unethical experiment in replacing the defective heart of “Baby Fae” with a baboon heart, rather than a heart from a more closely related organism like a chimp). The pig’s sperm would be wiped out by a big immune reaction, just like any other invading virus or bacterium or foreign body. ...

Pigs and chimps (and humans) are separated by at least 70-80 m.y. of evolutionary divergence into lineages which have long gone different directions—hybridization between such long-evolving groups simply doesn’t happen.

These genetic and anatomical differences are so difficult to overcome precisely because both lineages have been separated since the early radiation of the placental mammals, probably in the latest Cretaceous 70-80 m.y. ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the planet. The two groups diverged long ago and have been evolving separately since then, so there’s no way lineages from these two very different parts of the placental family tree can ever hybridize. Again, the long list of mistakes he makes in citing shared plesiomorphic characters shows that this guy is not up to date on phylogenetic thinking. (Even more bizarre: he thinks platypuses are crosses between birds and mammals, even though those two lineages have diverged 300 m.y. ago).

There’s no point in beating this ridiculous scientific argument to death any further. But this raises the next question: who is this Eugene McCarthy, and how did he go off the deep end of crackpot science?"

https://www.skepticblog.org/2013/12/04/hogwash/

Etc etc

If you're still not convinced, try to examine and understand the diagrams below.

And McCarthy's counterweight to claiming something that is scientifically impossible is cherry-picked morphological similarities and historical "evidence" such as this:

"An alleged pig-human hybrid that, according Johann Georg Schenck, was born on Cyprus near Nicosia, on Dec. 12, 1568, along with four normal piglets. (source: Monstrorum historia memorabilis, 1609, p. 113, fig. 85). The structure shown on the forehead may represent a frontal proboscis."

"Moritzburg. The German historian Johann Christoph von Dreyhaupt, in his treatise on his native Halle (Beschreibung des Saalkreises, 1755, vol. I, p. 645), states that a piglet with a human head was born in that city in 1523)."




http://www.macroevolution.net/pig-primate-hybrids-old-accounts.html

Baden’s quote is from an unsigned article. Not only are the author’s credentials unstated, but so is the author’s name.
.
The anonymous writer claimed that McCarthy rejects natural-selection. Incorrect. Of course natural-selection has guided evolution, and McCarthy doesn’t say otherwise.
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Natural-selection makes use of variation resulting from ordinary genetic re-mixing made possible by sexual reproduction, and also the more drastic (and then usually fatal) variations resulting from mutations, …mutations caused by irradiation by cosmic-rays, and naturally-occurring radioactive substances such as radon. …and mutations caused by naturally-occurring mutagenic substances in the environment.
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Another occasional cause for drastic variation would be distant-hybridizations.
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As with drastic variations resulting from mutations caused by irradiation or mutagens, the drastic variations from distant-hybridizations are nearly always fatal. …but, one driver of evolution is the fact that drastic variations, very very rarely, can be adaptively beneficial.
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No one’s denying natural-selection. In fact, no one’s saying that it’s known whether or not there can be successful mammalian inter-order hybridization. McCarthy merely points out some facts that are otherwise difficult to explain, and which have long puzzled scientists.
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McCarthy has collected and displays many articles and reports about alleged inter-order and inter-class hybridizations, but he doesn’t claim that the accounts are true. Is it advisable for him to have those articles and reports at his website? Probably not. I’d say of course not. Does the inclusion of those articles and reports somehow refute his pig-ancestry theory? Certainly not.
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So what’s Baden’s point, posting from an article that isn’t even signed? …the opinions of someone unknown, and almost surely uncredentialed?
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McCarthy answered his two most vociferous critics in pages at his website. You can link to those rebuttals from the table-of-contents at McCarthy’s primary page about human-origins, or else here, where he replies to Protherr and Myers:
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http://www.macroevolution.net/PZ-Myers.html
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http://www.macroevolution.net/prothero.html
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It’s to be noted that neither of those critics has any credentials that qualify them in any way comparable to McCarthy, on mammalian hybridization genetics.
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The objection to McCarthy’s suggestion is that it’s impossible for an inter-order hybridization among mammalian species to ever result in a viable living-thing.
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McCarthy doesn’t claim to know. …and neither do McCarthy’s critics, and neither do you. …because not everything about genetics is known, and the possibility of successful mammalian inter-order hybridization is one of the many things that just aren’t known.
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If any of you are sure that it isn’t possible, then you should write a paper, to share your findings with the rest of the scientific community. :D
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McCarthy points to facts that are difficult to explain any other way.
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The many anatomical attributes by which humans differ from all the other primates, but not from pigs, suggest that such a hybridization has taken place.
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Here are a few brief quotes from McCarthy, which summarize his suggestion:
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“The theory I actually propose (a theory, by the way, that accounts for the fact that we share many traits with pigs that we do not share with chimpanzees) is that long ago there was hybridization between a population of pig-like animals and a population of apes (similar to modern chimpanzees and bonobos) and that the resulting hybrid(s) then backcrossed to the ape population, resulting in the production of a mostly apelike population that retained a lot of piglike traits.”
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“What I would say to PZ Myers is: ‘Stop all the speculating and propounding and explain why the traits that distinguish us from chimpanzees consistently link us with pigs. Offer a different hypothesis accounting for our affinity to pigs. Put up or shut up!’ “:
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“Certain types of crosses produce a high percentage of inviable offspring, but occasionally produce viable offspring as well. But PZ Myers, says "I think they are highly unlikely to be possible." Why? We know that crosses can sometimes work even between forms of life that are rather distantly related.”
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“But Myers is dancing around the facts. What we know is that in hybrid crosses there are elevated levels of dysfunctionality. More dysfunctional offspring are produced than in ordinary matings. And in distant crosses there are, typically, more produced than in close ones. However, even crosses that produce many dysfunctional individuals may from time to time produce functional ones. What about them? What are their implications? Why couldn’t a rare functional individual pig-ape participate in the foundation of a new population? Even if most individuals from such a cross were non-viable and sterile? In fact, we know that certain crosses produce hybrids that are superior to their parents in certain respects. The best known case, of the many examples of this phenomenon, is the ordinary mule.”
--------------------------------------------------
I suggest that this topic is valuable and useful when it attracts and showcases the common tendency here, for uninformed proferssional-pretense from uncredentialed self-appointed experts.
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Michael Ossipoff
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13 Tu
2112 UTC

The idea is so ridiculous and so wrong in so many ways, and insultingly wrong to anyone with any background or understanding of the field, i — Baden

You mean like Baden's background and understanding of the field? Where did Baden get his PhD in genetics?

Michael Ossipoff

13 Tu
2115 UTC

You don't need a PhD in genetics to know how silly this idea is. But as it happens, I do have a background in this field, i.e. a degree in Zoology. (Not that you'd need one of those either, just as you wouldn't need to be a historian to know that Charlie Chaplin didn't lead the Third Reich into WWII). Anyway, persist if you must. It's in the lounge now.

But anyhow, seeing as you seem to give it credence, (on what basis I don't know) here is some of the basic detail of why it's wrong:... — Baden

Whereupon Baden quotes some text from Prothero or Myers. Neither Prothero nor Myers have credentials in the area they're discussing. In my previous post, I provided links to McCarthy's replies to Prothero and to Myers.

Michael Ossipoff

13 Tu
2123

You don't need a PhD in genetics to know how silly this idea is. — Baden

You need one to qualify you to expound about the correctness or incorrectness of what McCarthy says.

If you assert that an inter-order mammalian hybridization is entirely impossible, then you're claiming knowledge that science doesn't have, As I said, publish a paper, to share your findings with other genetics experts.

But as it happens, I do have a background in this field, i.e. a degree in Zoology.

...a genetics PhD, with specialization in hybridization?

Michael Ossipoff

13 Tu
2128 UTC

http://www.macroevolution.net/human-chicken-hybrids-fischer.html

"This page quotes three separate reports about living creatures that may have been human-chicken hybrids. Two of them are from scholarly sources. The first of these reports gives a description of a hen with a human face. A translation of the original Russian report, it appeared in the October 1816 issue of the scholarly journal Annals of Philosophy (vol. 8, no. iv, pp. 241-247). The author of the article was Johann Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim, the well-known German-born Russian naturalist."

"During the course of his work as director of the museum, he received specimens from all parts of Russia. One year, he was sent a very exceptional living specimen, a chicken with a human face, which he formally described. A transcript of his description, in English translation, appears below, together with illustrations of the animal that accompanied the article. The illustrations were prepared by one of the university’s artists, a Mr. Valesicon. They show three views of the face of the creature (which didn’t differ from ordinary chickens with respect to other portions of its body). A footnote on the first page of this article states it was “Translated almost verbatim from the Russ[ian] with some additions from the German edition by Dr. Lyall, Physician to Count Orlof at Moscow.”





"Also fascinating is a related case, which appears at the bottom of another page on this website as a screenshot of a news story. It describes what may have been an extremely bizarre human-cat-chicken three-way hybrid, a veritable sphinx in modern times." Learn more >>

As to why McCarthy decided to troll, BS, self-promote his way to Daily Mail stardom, the answer is most likely the usual one:

"Donate
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To make your donation with a credit or debit card—or with your Paypal account—through a secure donation page on PayPal, please click here:"

As already clarified, McCarthy didn't write those chicken reports, and doesn't endorse them as true.

If inviting donations for publication-expenses were discrediting, not much would be left undiscredited.

Michael Ossipoff

13 Tu
2235 UTC

He specifically uses the reports (which obviously he didn't write—he wasn't alive) as evidence for the notion that chickens and humans interbred, and he is endorsing that notion whether or not he definitively endorses the evidence.

From the first page "The Hühnermensch":

"Why would such hybrids occasionally occur?... So it seems that it is not that distant hybrids are entirely impossible, but rather that they do occur, but with hybrids that reach advanced stages of development being produced at only at very low frequencies."

"This page quotes three separate reports about living creatures that may have been human-chicken hybrids. Two of them are from scholarly sources."

And the pig-chimpanzee thing is hardly less insane though it's a little more subtle.

"So it seems that it is not that distant hybrids are entirely impossible, but rather that they do occur, — Baden

(quoted from McCarthy)

If there are survivable closer hybrids, then it would hardly be surprising if there were non-survivable more distant ones. ...nearly all of them unsurvivable, and, among the very few survibable ones, nearly all sterile.

But, as for the matter of whether there could, very very rarely, be a survivable and fertile distant hybrid... That, as I said before, isn't known. So let's not claim to know the answer to that.

McCarthy doesn't claim the pig-theory as fact, but only presents some facts that are otherwise difficult to explain.

Michael Ossipoff

13 Tu
2313 UTC

Aren't you forgetting rather significant attributes like a significantly increased brain volume? — Echarmion

Aren't you forgetting what you read, when you read McCarthy's pages about human origins? Oh, that's right, you didn't read it. You're just expounding about what you haven't read.

A good rule: No read, no expound.

Pigs happen to have certain attributes that, combined with what chimps (or their near-ancestors) had, may have allowed, made possible, the attribute you describe in the quoted passage above, in addition to erect-standing posture.

As I said, McCarthy answers about that at his human-origins pages, but you'll have to do your own reading.

There is a fairly large amount of readily available evidence for similarly "humongous set(s) of coincidences" occurring. — Echarmion

Of course there's been convergent evolution, when conditions were such as to favor the same attribute. But the pig-human situation is one in which living conditions and lifestyle were distinctly different, and the number of coincidences needed to explain the many similarities (not shared by any of the other primates) presents a big explanatory-problem which has been puzzling to scientists.

Michael Ossipoff

13 Tu
2325 UTC