The Human-Ape Hybrid Experiments? the full story

Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov

Born in Russia, Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov  the Soviet biologist  was specialized in the field of artificial insemination and the interspecific hybridization of animals, but ut he wanted to do more in life than breed fatter cows and breeding horses and domestic animals. The most controversial of Ivanov's studies was his attempt to create a human-ape hybrid. In 1910, he had given a presentation to the World Congress of Zoologists in Graz in which he described the possibility of obtaining such a hybrid through artificial insemination.

In 1924, Ivanov obtained permission from the Institute's directors to use its experimental primate station in Kindia, French Guinea, for such an experiment. Ivanov attempted to gain backing for his project from the Soviet government, interested at that time to create the super warrior. According to a report published in The Scotsman newspaper on 20 December 2005, Stalin is said to have told Ivanov, ‘I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat.’  in 1925, Ivanov got the support of the Soviet government with a US$10,000 allocated to the   Academy of Sciences for Ivanov's human-ape hybridization experiments in Africa.

After Obtaining the permission from the French Guinea’s colonial governor to work at the botanical gardens in Conakry. Here Ivanov artificially inseminated three chimpanzees. All three failed to become pregnant.  He returned to the Soviet Union, where further planned experiments also failed.

Frustrated, Ivanov returned to the Soviet Union. He brought an orangutan named Tarzan back with him, hoping to continue his research in a more accepting environment. Back home he advertised for female volunteers willing to carry Tarzan’s child, and remarkably he got a few takers. But then Tarzan died. v

In 1930, Ivanov came under ‘political criticism’ during the ‘Great Purge’ and was arrested. He was sentenced to five years’ exile in Alma Ata, Kazakh S.S.R. (now Almaty, Kazakhstan), where he worked for the Kazakh Veterinary-Zoology Institute until his death from a stroke on March 20, 1932. The famous psychologist and dog researcher, Ivan Pavlov, wrote an obituary about him.

There are vague rumors suggesting that other Soviet scientists continued Ivanov’s work, but nothing definite has been proven.