Meet Your Other Half

Though they say you've moved on. Fri 29 April 2022

Apes don't have high foreheads, protruding noses - or cleft lips. Source

All three features appear while humans are embryos. Though cleft lips usually disappear later on:

Embryonic development of the face. Source

So where did human DNA get the code for them?

Geneticist Eugene McCarthy found an explanation:

  • Hybridisation

McCarthy - the short version:

  • Humans are a hybrid of chimpanzee and another genetic 'parent'.

  • You can't see the other parent in our DNA is because the first few generations of their hybrid offspring bred only with our chimpanzee-like ancestor. This 'backcrossing' went on for several generations.

  • Backcrossing removes the DNA fingerprints of the other parent from the hybrid's DNA. It also helps the hybrid become more fertile.

  • However, traces of both hybrid parents may remain in their descendants. Not in their DNA but as fingerprints in their anatomy and behaviour.

It was by looking at our anatomy and behaviour that Eugene McCarthy found our other parent.

Pig.

From Sus - Wikipedia:

Pigs are biologically similar to humans and are thus frequently used for human medical research.

In 2005, animal geneticists Lawrence Schook and Jonathan Beever also noticed the genome of the domestic pigs is "remarkably similar" to the human genome.

From Human to Pig Genome Comparison Complete:

Everything matches up perfectly. The pig is genetically very close to humans.

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