A scientist has claimed that a ‘humanzee’ was born in an American lab nearly 100 years ago before being killed by panicked doctors.

Renowned evolutionary psychologist, Gordon Gallup, told The Sun that the human-chimpanzee hybrid was born in a lab in Orange Park, Florida.

Gallup, who developed the famous mirror ‘self-recognition’ test which proved primates could acknowledge their own reflection, coined the term ‘humanzee’ which refers to a human-chimp crossbreed.

He told the newspaper that his former university professor claimed the humanzee baby was born at a research facility where he used to work.

Gallup, who is also a University of Albany professor, told the Sun that the professor worked at Yerkes before the research center moved to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1930.

‘One of the most interesting cases involved an attempt which was made back in the 1920s in what was the first primate research center established in the US in Orange Park, Florida,’ Gallup said.

‘They inseminated a female chimpanzee with human semen from an undisclosed donor and claimed not only that pregnancy occurred but the pregnancy went full-term and resulted in a live birth.

‘But in the matter of days, or a few weeks, they began to consider the moral and ethical considerations and the infant was euthanized,’ Gallup told the Sun.

Gallup’s term humanzee became well known in the 1970s after the emergence of a chimp known as Oliver, a bald chimp who walked on his hind legs.

Despite claims that Oliver was a human-chimp hybrid, tests later proved that the animal was not a humanzee.

Russia biologist Ilya Ivanov, in the 1920s, tried and failed to create a Soviet super-soldier using human sperm and female chimps.

Another reported case happened in China in 1967 where a female primate became pregnant with a human-hybrid, but died from neglect after the lab’s scientists were forced to abandon the project.

Gallup claims that humans can be crossbred with other apes and not just chimpanzees.

‘All of the available evidence both fossil, palaeontological and biochemical, including DNA itself, suggests that humans can also breed with gorillas and orang-utans,’ he added.

A spokeswoman for Yerkes National Primate Research Center, said: ‘We have not been involved with any “humanzee” experiments, but rather conduct and enable peer-reviewed research studies to help fight disease and improve human health.’

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5328435/Scientist-claims-humanzee-born-lab-killed.html#ixzz55uo4Vq9c