|
6-11-03
Oliver, is he human, is he primate, is he both?
Facts: Male, 30-40yrs, hairy, height: 4
ft, weight: 110lbs, erect posture.
Yes... erect posture ... He walks bipedally, and not just for a few minutes,
he has always since his childhood walked upright. (video clips soon)
This was the first sign to his owners that Oliver was "different". He
began his life as a sideshow, but soon took up acting. This didn't work out to well, considering that the other chimps
wouldn't come near him because the scent he let off.
Not being able to play well with others, Oliver was then sold to a family whom
raised him almost as a human. Oliver quickly adapted, and began watching T.V., smoking cigars, mixing drinks, using
the toilet, and drinking coffee.
Oliver was doing fine until he hit adolescence. At this time he felt the
need for companionship, and instead of wanting another chimp, Oliver wanted his Female owner. This actually turned
into such an infatuation, that he actually grabbed her by the back of the neck and mounted her.
This is when Oliver was sold to a lawyer whom fancied him, and has lost the
sight of the media since the late 1980's.
Oliver is still alive and well, and he is kept in my homestate of Texas, out
of the view of the public, but one day I plan to look into the eyes of Oliver, that is when I will tell you what I think he
is. One suggestion is a cross between a chimpanzee and a bonobo (a "pygmy chimpanzee"). Or even some talks of
a Human-Chimp hybrid. We know know that cross-breeding a species is possible between a lion and a tiger. The
results are a huge animal known as a Liger. Also when a Horse and a Donkey do it <--- I am so literal I love it, you get a mule. Most of these animals
if not all are sterile, and have no way of reproducing.
He had been re-examined by scientists, they have come to these
conclusions:
Oliver does have 48 chromosomes (24 pairs) the same as a chimpanzee,
which was different than a claim made by a earlier scientist in China, whom stated that Oliver had 47, one less than a chimp,
and one more than a human. They also revealed that his chromosomes possessed banding patterns typical for the common
chimpanzee but different from those of humans and bonobos, thereby excluding any possibility of Oliver being a hybrid.
Moreover, they sequenced Oliver's mitochondrial DNA and discovered
that its sequence corresponded very closely with that of the Central African subspecies of common chimpanzee; the closest
correspondence of all was with a chimp specimen from Gabon in Central-West Africa. This all strongly suggests that Oliver
also originated from this region and is simply a common chimp.
After decades of mystery, Oliver's identity had finally been
uncovered, exposed by his genes. But what of his external idiosyncrasies? his jawbone, nose, ears, and his walking bipedally?
For instance, although media accounts had noted that Oliver
was toothless, his teeth had been pulled. Primatologist Dr. Clifford Jolly had examined Oliver as long ago as 1976. Jolly
found that Oliver did not share the strikingly prognathous (projecting) jaw line of other chimps due to reabsorption of the
alveolar bone, a shortened maxilla and premaxilla (upper jaw bones), and underdeveloped temporal musculature. Jolly had concluded
that these features were in turn caused by Oliver's toothless condition. He also concluded that Oliver's habitual bipedal
gait was due to conditioning.
All of this new information is as intriging as when I first found out
of him, and it leaves me to make some of my own assumptions.
I think that Oliver might actually be a
normal chimpanzee, just a sort of mutated chimp. Over the years Darwin has taught us that evolution happens through
two processes. Adaption/Mutation. Oliver is the later of the two in my eyes. He might be a mutation
of a chimpanzee, and could be the "missing link" to an new upincoming race of pre-hominoid beings.
|
