.A Chinese team has genetically engineered a macaque monkey to make it more human.
“This was the first attempt to understand the evolution of human cognition using a transgenic monkey model,” says Bing Su, the geneticist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology who led the effort. According to their findings, the modified monkeys did better on a memory test involving colours and block pictures, and their brains also took longer to develop—as those of human children do. this There wasn’t a difference in brain size.
This has created a backlash among US developers: ¨ “The use of transgenic monkeys to study human genes linked to brain evolution is a very risky road to take,” says James Sikela, a geneticist who carries out comparative studies among primates at the University of Colorado. He is concerned that the experiment shows disregard for the animals and will soon lead to more extreme modifications. “It is a classic slippery slope issue and one that we can expect to recur as this type of research is pursued,” he says.
This is still a long way to the quest of evolutionists. the union of man and monkey.
At times, their strategy borders on the absurd. A case in point is the rumour that US scientists engineered a human-chimp hybrid in the 1920s in the first primate research centre established in the US in Orange Park, Florida.