662. Oliver, The Alleged Humanzee

662.  Oliver, The Alleged Humanzee

I have been watching this documentary:
http://documentaryheaven.com/oliver-the-chimp/

At first I suspected it to be a hoax, but after some googling, Oliver's peculiarities as shown seem to have been genuine.   But my curiosity to find out more was disappointed.   

His having the same number of chromosome as chimpanzees has been accepted as sufficient evidence to declare him as a genetic chimpanzee in spite of considerable genetic differences.   

After Oliver's death in 2012, the owners of his carcass cremated him and refused any scientific research on his body.  

http://www.friendsofanimals.org/news/2012/june/the-life-and-times-o.html 

The people in the sanctuary do a good job protecting animals, while they are alive, but this does not justify to boycott scientific progress by impeding research on dead animals' bodies.  

I found some more sources, but I cannot know, how much is based upon evidence, and how much is legend, rumor and hearsay.  

Other bipedal chimpanzees are mentioned:
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/creatures/oliverabilene.htm

According to this source, there are several unrecognized and unexplored species of apes in Africa:
http://www.mid-americabigfoot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3838

So my comments and speculations are only based upon the video showing Oliver.   By both his looks and his bipedalism, he is remarkably different from regular chimpanzees.   But he does not appear to me as a half-breed as would be a first generation hybrid, but more like 3/4 or even 7/8 ape.     With mules, this is at least not impossible:

"A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse.[1] Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes."
"A few female mules have produced offspring when mated with a purebred horse or donkey."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule

"the genetic difference between humans and chimps is less than 2%"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolutionary_genetics

Therefore if a man had raped or otherwise abused a female pet chimpanzee, the result could have been a hybrid daughter, who mated with a chimpanzee and become the mother or even the grandmother of Oliver.       

If Oliver really had a human ancestor, if indeed human-ape hybrids are feasible, then this is one more indication, that defining what is human cannot be merely based upon genes, but a distinction by other criteria is required.    

 

The unique human cognition justifies specific privileges, because humans can discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate targets of their behavior.    

 

A hungry lion hunts anything, he does not distinguish between antelopes and humans.   He has not sufficient cognition to know, that if he would only hunt antelopes and never humans, he could be tolerated and left in peace.  A lion is not fit for the privilege to be allowed unlimited liberty.    

But a human hunter can know by his cognition, that he can hunt deer in a limited area without consequences, while sheep on a meadow or the deer in another tribe's territory are no suitable targets for a hunt.   

Therefore the question, who is human, is also the question, who gets the privileges only reserved for humans.   

There is an unfortunate fallacy.   While privileges reserved for humans are derived from the principal and theoretical ability to choose appropriate targets for behavior, this does not mean, that all members of the species homo sapiens do choose the appropriate targets.    They can instead know, what is inappropriate, and they can nevertheless be driven by instinct to do it.  

Cognitive humans are able to keep out, where they have no right to be.  Groups driven by the ingroup-outgroup instinct raid another tribe's territory.   In this case, they behave like animals, but they nevertheless continue to feel entitled to privileges as if they were acting by cognition.     

The genetic distinction serves the selfish needs of those, who want to behave as ruthlessly as animals but also to feel justified to profit from all the privileges reserved to humans.   

Oliver had been captured in the Congo, and the video completely omits questioning his origins.   This omission indicates one of the last taboos, zoophilia and sodomy. 

In all societies of superficially civilized but desensitized men, who consider objectifying and commodifying women as normal expressions of masculinity, restricting abuse to females of the human species serves the justification of being specially privileged while also allowing instinctive behaviors not different from other animals.   Would such a man admit, that zoophilic abuse suffices for him to restore his sexual homeostasis, he would also admit, that he really is not any better or any different from a beast and he would have to face this unpleasant truth.  

But when desensitization has gone even farther, then privileges are not ascribed to human genes, they are considered as the right of the strongest after applying any methods of fighting.   Considering the extreme cruelty of many African armed conflicts, rebellions and wars, including atrocious rapes, there the step from abusing women to abusing chimpanzees is only a small and logical further step.   Human-ape hybrids are extremely rare, if any exist at all, but this is only due to biological reasons and not because dehumanized men keep away from female apes.

A human-ape hybrid would cause serious logical problems, if privileges were to be accorded automatically to beings having the genes of homo sapiens.  This is one more reason, why these genes are not a sufficient justification to give human privileges to any person.     The best criterion is the talent of sufficient cognitive control over those instincts, which cause harm to others.   Only those, who do not harm and abuse others, deserve to be called human.  

At the actual level of evolution, this talent can only be found in a fraction of the species homo sapiens.