Is this really a human-goat baby from Johor? We ask science!

A couple of days ago, many people were shocked (and some probably a little disturbed) by the news some people in Johor had found some sort of…..human-goat baby.

News sites reported that Felda settler Ibrahim Basir was informed of this weird dead creature by his partner, Jamaludin, who was checking out on their livestock when he found it.

“After I was informed on the ‘weird creature’, I checked on it and found out that its physicalities wasn’t like any other kid including the flattened nose, wide mouth and stubby legs as compared to other kids..” – Felda settler Ibrahim Basir, as quoted by Harian Metro, translation by SOSCILI (yes, our BM site  😀 )

But how did this even happen??? Alien experimentation? El Nino? The spawn of the devil himself?? Toyol!? Actually one common answer from people was actually….

Chewbacca aside, many people questioned that this creature was the result of ….bestiality – when one has sexual relations with an animal. In fact, the recent news about this human-goat baby is that the Johor gomen is looking at the possibility of it being the product of bestiality. 

And it’s not the first time something like this has happened. As we Googled for similar instances, we actually found cases of human-looking goats/sheep in Argentina, Russia, Turkey, and Nigeria! (WARNING: we didn’t include the pictures in the article cos some of these are graphic. Click above to view.)

All these look pretty creepy, but that just leaves the question of is a human-animal hybrid even possible?

No, it’s not possible for a human + animal to be born naturally

Sorry. Let’s just get that over with first. By naturally we mean born of natural causes, no aliens, no supernatural stuff, just the result of when a male loves a female.

And it’s not just the human-animal combination that is impossible, but any form of reproduction when one species breeds with another species.

You can’t just shove a goat and a kangaroo in a room with mood lighting and Barry White albums and expect baby goat-a-roos to hop out a few trimesters later. The reason for this is the reason that there are different sorts of animals in the first place.

It’s called speciation, and it occurs when a population of animals, for various reasons, evolve to a point where they can’t interbreed successfully with other related animals (“success” in this case meaning making more of themselves). – Columnist Miss Cellania, on Neatorama

In other words, a gorilla and an elephant cannot reproduce because genetically they are too different from each other.

However, there are some cases where interspecies breeding is possible! For example, you may have heard of hybrids between a tiger and a lion, or a donkey and a horse and a zebra, BUT these are possible because they sorta in the same family, something known as a genus. (We wanna thank commentor Zikri Kamarulzaman for pointing this out to us. 😀 )

Still, even when animals like these do exist, most of the time they are sterile. So a tiger and lion can mate and have kids, but the kids are incapable of having kids of their own.

We must also add that with this, some people actually think we are able to reproduce with chimpanzees (because they share 98% of our DNA, as much as between a horse and a zebra), but even then, as far as experiments go, there are no recorded instances of a human-chimpanzee hybrid ever being born. (Even this one chimp named Oliver that people thought was part human was eventually proven to be a just normal chimpanzee.)

But wait…..experiments?

Yes, scientists are actually experimenting on human-animal combos

So in regards to the human-chimpanzee experiment, that was actually an experiement by Soviet scientist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov (if you wanna read about it, may be a bit disturbing, so be aware la), in the early 1900’s. (Some people say that the Soviet Union allowed this because Joseph Stalin wanted to create an army of half-human, half-monkey super soldiers!)

And though no one has since tried to see if humans and monkeys could mate, other types of experiments involving human-animals combos have been happening over the years, to be more specific, human-animal embryo (fertilised egg) research.

But why would anyone do that???

A lot of this research is actually centered around medical purposes like finding cures for diseases, producing blood for blood tranfusions, and growing human organs for transplants. Stuff that could actually save lives!!

“Those awaiting kidney transplants in the UK spend on average two to three years on the waiting list, undergoing the disruptive process of dialysis during that period. But thanks to the work of researchers at several institutions in America, human organs could one day be grown on demand inside animals, eliminating long waiting lists and saving lives.” – Columnist Doug Bolton, on INDEPENDENT

Of course there are also ethical and religious concerns to this technology (which is a whole other topic on its own) but one important thing to note here is that this can only be done in a lab. 

Which means…..

This human-looking goat is most likely just a deformity

We actually found more pictures of this human-goat baby on Facebook, and as we looked at more and more angles of it….it actually started to look less and less human. (The images are also quite graphic so we’ve not put them here, but if you wanna see them click here.)

In fact, in some of the instances in other countries, vets concluded that these human-looking animals happened due to either pregnancy complications or genetic mutations caused by chemicals. (Once again, graphic content warning for those links.)

And as the gomen continues their investigations into this human-looking goat baby (which they said will take 2 weeks to a month), one can only hope that the gomen does not conclude this creature as being a product of bestiality, because that would just be impossible from a scientific point of view. (It definitely wouldn’t be the first time a gomen dept made a scientific error.)

Because based on what is mentioned above, it’s highly unlikely that this creature is actually the product of sexual relations between a human and a goat, but just one that was deformed. In fact, this comment actually brought up a pretty valid point on the possibility of this ever happening.

“Bestiality–the act of sexual activity between a human and a nonhuman animal–has been around for tens of thousands of years and it has never resulted in a human/nonhuman hybrid, though certainly not for lack of trying.” – Commentor Sky, on Yahoo answers

In other words…

• WHOAH. DID MALAYSIAN PALM OIL ESTATES CREATE THIS WEIRD CREATURE?!
• WHAT’S SO WORRYING ABOUT THIS WEIRD CREATURE SPOTTED IN AMPANG??!
• IS THIS WEIRD FISH FOUND AT PULAU REDANG SOME KINDA WARNING?