A MonsterQuest Look at Stalin’s Ape Man

In the MonsterQuest episode entitled “Stalin’s Ape Man”, the team takes a look at the reports of half man, half ape creatures in the former Soviet Union. There are reports that Stalin authorized a project to create an ape-man army in the 1920s. A Russian historian claims to have the remains of a descendent from a Bigfoot type creature known as an Abanu. They look at the possibility that Bigfoot and Abanu sightings are a result of an evolutionary throwback condition known as atavism. The MonsterQuest team takes a look at what is behind these stories.

The Creation of an Ape-Man Soldier

In 2005, an open editorial appeared in the New York Times that was authored by animal psychologist Clive Wynne. This article mentioned “In 1926, a Soviet scientist named Ilya Ivanov decided to breed a humanzee: a human chimpanzee hybrid.” This article was soon followed up by a number articles in Russian newspapers about this humanzee program. A 20 December 2005 article in the Scotsmen Newspaper reported about “Stalin’s Half-man, Half-ape, Super Warriors”.

The story that was forming out of all of these articles was that Stalin had instituted a program to create a super soldier. In 1926, the Politburo had requested that the Russian Academy of Science work to build a new living war machine that was insensitive to pain and indifferent to the quality of food. These programs were to create an invincible ape-man army.

According to historian Alexis Pogorelskin, the 1920s was the golden age of Soviet science. Following World War I, the Soviets were attempting to use science to modernize many aspects of Soviet life. The Soviet army was in great need of additional forces and modernization. Stalin was very aggressive with research and did not have many moral qualms about the use of science or anything else.

The MonsterQuest team went to Russia to find out the truth behind these reports. Russian Academy of Science Historian Kirill Rossiianov has researched the Academy documents for the history of these experiments. Rossiianov found documentation that Stalin approved funding for Ilya Ivanov’s experiment to create an ape-man hybrid.

Ivanov had a record of successful hybridization experiments including the creation of an antelope-cow hybrid, a mouse-rat hybrid, guinea pig-rabbit hybrid and a zebra-donkey hybrid. Ivanov’s ape-man experiment involved the artificial insemination of female chimpanzees with human semen. With DNA research in its infancy, Ivanov had inferred that human and chimpanzee eggs and semen were very similar due to the close match of human and chimpanzee blood. In 1926, the French Pasteur Institute gave Ivanov access to their primate research facility in Conakry, Guinea.

According to modern scientists, Ivanov’s ideas were not without some merit. Some other primate species are able to interbreed and humans and chimpanzees have DNA that is almost 99% identical. Humans and Chimpanzees are believed to have evolved from the same evolutionary branch of the primate family. Other primates like orangutans and gorillas evolved along a different line of the primate family. Human and Chimpanzee ancestors are believed to have diverged about 7.5 million years ago but recent research indicates that the early ancestors may have interbred for another 2 million years. Of all primates, chimpanzees would be the most likely candidate for a hybridization program.

It is unknown if an ape-human hybrid would make a good soldier. According to Esteban Sarmiento of the New York Natural History Museum, chimpanzees are like human in that they will organize in order to fight each other. Bill Fields of the Great Ape Trust says that chimpanzees can be very warlike and are 5 to 10 times stronger than humans. University of Florida animal psychologist Clive Wynne believes that while ape species are much stronger than humans, they would be uncontrollable.

Interbreeding with humans would also face difficulties due to the fact that chimpanzees have 24 chromosomes while humans have 23. Associate Professor of genetics Mike Seamans believes that any offspring would likely be malformed, retarded and not likely to make it much past birth if even that far. If by some chance hybridization was possible, the offspring would possibly be infertile like mules. Clive Wynne states that even if successful the results might not be what you wanted. You have just as good of a chance in getting a hybrid with the strength of a human and the intelligence of a chimpanzee as the other way around.

Ivanov’s experiment in Africa was unsuccessful. He attempted to inseminate three female chimpanzees with no success. At this point, he decided to return to the Soviet Union and take a different approach. He proposed to inseminate a human female with the semen from an orangutan named “Tarzan”. He relocated to Sukhumi, GeorgiaSoviet Union and got his first human volunteer in 1928. in the At this point the experiment came to an abrupt end prior to any attempt at human fertilization. Tarzan died and Ivanov was arrested during Stalin’s purge of Soviet scientists. Ivanov died in 1932 while still in jail.

Kirill Rossiianov’s research indicates that Ivanov was probably not trying to create a super soldier. There is no official documentation showing that the experiment was intended to create super soldiers. The grant that Ivanov received was given at the same time as many other scientific grants for general research. The amount of the grant was only $120,000 in today’s dollars so it was not a major project. Ivanov’s notes indicate that his attempts at creating the ape-man hybrid were to support Darwinism and discredit the Church.

The Russian Bigfoot

Most cryptozoologists do not attribute the numerous Bigfoot type sightings to human-ape hybrids. They believe that these creatures are the result of the evolution of a different branch of the primate family that included the Gigantopithecus species. Gigantopithecus was a species of primates that experts believe went extinct as recently as 300,000 years ago. This giant sized creature was native to Asia and could reach heights of 11 to 15 feet tall. President of Conservation International Russell Mittenmier points out that there have been 38 species of monkeys discovered since 1980 so it is not out of the realm of possibility that some Gigantopithecus descendant could still be around.

One such creature may be the Abanu or Almasty of Russian legend. The Abanu and Almasty are similar to the North American Bigfoot with some distinctions. They are reported to be between 6’ and 7’ tall, bipedal, with reddish hair. Unlike Bigfoot, the Abanu and Almasty are reported to use fire and simple tools.

Russian historian Igor Bourstev tells the story of one particular Abanu named Zana. In the 1860s she was captured by local hunters in the Abkazir region, which is between Georgia and Russia. Zana was sold to a local merchant and placed in a cage. Reportedly, she was almost 7 feet tall, very strong, covered in hair, very wild and preferred raw meat to eat. After years of captivity, she became more domesticated and was allowed to roam the village and work in a local mill. She had several children by several different men. She killed her first child by bathing it in a cold river so the village raised her other children.

Zana’s children appeared to be human and had normal intelligence. One of these children was a male named Khwit. He was reported to have been extremely strong, ill tempered and quick to fight. Zana died in 1890 and was buried in Abkazir. When Khwit died later on he was buried in the same area.

Bourstev went in search of the remains of Zana and was unable to locate them, but he did locate and obtain the remains of Khwit. In 2006, the DNA testing of a tooth belonging to Khwit showed that he was 100% human. Bourstev agreed to give the MonsterQuest team a tooth from Khwit’s remains in order to perform more extensive DNA tests.

The new round of DNA testing was conducted by University of Minnesota microbiologist Kurt Nelson. Nelson felt that the first round of testing may have been tainted by human contamination. To avoid this contamination Nelson thoroughly cleans and bleaches the tooth. A sample is then drilled from inside the tooth and two other samples are obtained by crushing the tooth. The mitochondrial DNA from the samples is to be compared to controls in order to determine if the mother of Khwit was human. Unfortunately, Nelson was not able to extract any viable DNA from the tooth sample so no results were found.

Atavism and Bigfoot

Danny Ramos Gomez is a world famous acrobat that has a condition known as hypertrichosis. This condition causes Gomez to have excessive body hair over his entire body. Many that have worked with him believe that he has strength that is far greater than a regular man. Some people have wondered that if this condition is a symptom from human-ape hybridization. MonsterQuest obtained a hair sample from Gomez and had a DNA test done on it. The test results showed him to be 100% human.

Other people have stated that they believe hypertrichosis is a form of atavism. Atavism is when an evolutionary throwback shows up in a current member of the species. An example of this is when a human is born with a tail. Some believe it is possible that Bigfoot sightings are due to humans with several atavism traits taking to a life of seclusion in the woods. Experts state that a person would be extremely unlikely to show multiple traits of atavism that would be needed to account for a Bigfoot sighting. It would be unlikely for even one to be born much less the number needed to account for sightings around the world.

Head Transplants

One possible way of creating a human-ape hybrid would be placing a human head on the body of an ape. As crazy as this sounds, it might not be as far fetched as you think. MonsterQuest interviewed neurosurgeon Dr. Robert White. Dr. White had done experiments on the possibility of transplanting the heads of paraplegic patients to the bodies of brain dead patients. His experiments involved the use of monkeys due to their genetic similarity to humans.

MonsterQuest showed some real disturbing footage of this experiment from 1970. Dr. White did successfully transplant the head of one monkey to the body of the other. While the monkey did not walk around or anything like that, it did seem to be conscious and able to control some motor functions. The monkey was able to see, taste and bite after the transplant. The experiments were abandoned due to ethical concerns but it does raise some possibilities. Dr. White points out that this procedure would probably never work on transplanting a human head to an ape body due to the huge transplant rejection issues that would arise.