- 4 months ago
- #terrifying
- #mythicalcreatures
- #documentary
Documentary, True Monsters, Terrifying Mythical Creatures S1 E4
#Terrifying #MythicalCreatures #Documentary
#Terrifying #MythicalCreatures #Documentary
Category
🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:00Legendary giants.
00:02He appeared to be uncomfortable.
00:04And colossal beasts.
00:08Real monsters are behind our greatest myths.
00:13What evil lurks in this ancient labyrinth?
00:16We're dealing with something that is almost human, but not quite human.
00:20Were Cyclops legends more than meets the eye?
00:23He's just raw power, just straight up evil.
00:26Power scaling stories are more than just stories.
00:29The surprising truths behind the biggest, baddest giants and beasts in history.
00:35Right now.
00:51Our first mystery goes back 3,000 years to one of history's most infamous giants.
00:57Was Goliath a real person?
01:01And if so, how did he get so huge?
01:05Clues may be buried in the biblical accounts of this epic showdown.
01:11The kingdom of Israel and the Philistines are at war over faith and territory.
01:17The Philistines think they have an edge.
01:19They sent forth an enormous warrior to challenge the Israelites in one-on-one combat.
01:25The Goliath of Gath.
01:27He represented everything that the Israelites were afraid of.
01:33He appeared to be unconquerable.
01:37Every morning, the Israelites would line up.
01:43And every morning, the Philistines send this one huge man, Goliath, up to the front of the line.
01:53And he says, why are you lining up your men?
01:57Why don't you just send one man to fight me?
02:01If he kills me, you win.
02:03If I kill him, we win.
02:05Not a single Israelite budges.
02:08Until finally, a scrawny youth descends into the valley to face Goliath.
02:15He carries a shepherd's staff and a sling.
02:19It's David.
02:21He has a sling because he represents a normal person.
02:24And that's something that almost everybody would have in their pocket.
02:28You know, sort of chasing off sheep and things like that.
02:31And that sling tells us that this boy could be anyone.
02:36David's youthfulness infuriates his battle-scarred opponent.
02:41So here you have a punk kid standing with a weapon that was meant to harass.
02:46Not a proper weapon to kill.
02:48The punk kid shouldn't even be here.
02:51He's come from Bethlehem to fetch bread for his older brothers.
02:56But David's not as weak as he appears.
02:59There are historical accounts that this kid killed lions and bears.
03:05And so I think people forget that piece.
03:11In the face of the unconquerable, David betrays no fear.
03:16At least on the outside.
03:18Of course David would be afraid.
03:20He would be terrified.
03:21Just because he was afraid does not mean he was incapable of fighting that fight.
03:26Every soldier you ever talk to who goes into battle is afraid.
03:30They're all Davids.
03:32He was going from being a kid to being a warrior in that moment.
03:36He just bent over and he picked up five smooth stones.
03:41And these he put in his pouch.
03:44And he picked up his sling and he walked towards Goliath.
03:48And Goliath sees him and he goes, what?
03:51It was insulting actually to send, what are you sending this young unarmed, you know, unprotected guy against me.
04:07The Philistine curses David and vows to feed the Israelites' flesh to the birds and the wild animals.
04:17Smack talking is one of his fatal mistakes.
04:21Never brag in a fight.
04:23That is one of the basic rules of fighting.
04:25David was listening and saying, OK, this guy's talking trash.
04:29And as soon as he makes a move, I want to put him down.
04:32And that's exactly what he did.
04:43You can get a stone of a quarter pound and a sling can hurl that at a couple of hundred miles an hour.
04:49It's like a whip.
04:51You know, when you crack a whip, you hear that sound.
04:53That's because the tip of the whip is going faster than the speed of sound.
04:56It's a sonic boomer breaking the sound barrel.
04:59That stone can hit with a great degree of speed and a great amount of force.
05:08According to the legend, all it takes to fell the giant is one shot.
05:14But for Goliath, the worst is yet to come.
05:18He kills him with his own sword to add insult to injury.
05:22Then goes, finds his family and kills them.
05:24You know, David is seen as kind of this writing poetry and playing the flute or something.
05:29This guy was a killer.
05:34In the Bible, David goes on to become a king and a prophet.
05:38But what about Goliath?
05:48Was he a real giant taken out by a simple stone?
05:53A closer look at the historical details provides powerful insight into this age old question.
05:59According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Goliath stood four cubits and a span.
06:06That's six foot nine inches.
06:08Very tall by today's standards, but gigantic 3,000 years ago.
06:14We've gotten bigger because of nutrition.
06:17Going back to the time of David, the average height tended to be somewhere in the five foot range.
06:22Five-three to be precise.
06:25Funny thing about Goliath, he tends to grow with the telling.
06:30Later versions of the Bible describe him as six cubits and a span, nearly ten feet tall.
06:37It might seem impossible, but is it?
06:41If Goliath was real, there's a genetic condition that could account for his height.
06:46It's called gigantism, or acromegaly, which occurs when a tumor forms in the pituitary gland
06:54and produces extra growth hormones.
06:57Robert Wadlow, the tallest man on record at eight feet 11 inches, had gigantism.
07:05The wrestler Andre the Giant had it.
07:08And some believe President Abraham Lincoln at six foot four inches did too.
07:14He towered above his contemporaries, who averaged five foot six inches.
07:20Gigantism also afflicts the tallest man in America today.
07:25When we arrived here in the United States, I was almost seven years old, and I was already six feet tall.
07:32Igor Vovkavinsky is now 32 years old and seven foot eight inches.
07:38And he knows great height can come at a great cost.
07:43Could challenges Igor faces help explain what happened to Goliath?
07:48The overproduction of growth hormone can affect many of the systems in the body.
07:52It can affect the joints.
07:54It could possibly affect some of the behavior.
07:56It could possibly affect vision.
07:59Double vision and blurriness occur as the tumor grows, pressing on nerves in the brain.
08:09A closer reading of the Bible suggests Goliath's sight may have been a real issue for the giant.
08:15It says a shield-bearing attendant leads Goliath to the valley floor.
08:21Why would such a fierce warrior need a hand unless he has trouble seeing?
08:27To some, that's a clue he suffered from gigantism.
08:34The Bible also describes how slowly he moves.
08:39A vulnerability that could stem from weakened joints.
08:43Another symptom of the debilitating condition.
08:49But is there any physical proof that Goliath existed?
08:53In 1979, archaeologists unearthed a tomb near modern-day Jericho in the West Bank, not far from Goliath's alleged hometown of Gath.
09:06It was inscribed with the name Goliath.
09:10Inside was the skeleton of a six-foot, two-inch man, which doesn't quite match his height recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but comes close.
09:20So far, no one has been able to say for certain that the tall skeleton they found is the actual Goliath.
09:28David and Goliath's battle contains an essential truth, one that transcends the importance of finding physical proof the giant existed.
09:37What matters is the story.
09:40That's a human story we all love.
09:42With a tiny stone, we can change the world.
09:45We can bring down giants.
09:47I'm giant.
09:48.
09:57I don't know.
10:27During a routine job on a typical fall day in the Midwest,
10:31farmhands make a find that is anything but ordinary,
10:37an enormous skull with what looks like a single sizable eye
10:41socket right in the middle of the forehead.
10:45The ancient Greeks collected fossils like these
10:48and believe they told a story about massive monsters.
10:53The skeleton looked sort of human-like,
10:56only much bigger and a little stranger.
10:58Next thing you know, ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing, ba-da-bam,
11:01you have a cyclops.
11:03Is this skull archeological proof that one of history's most
11:07famous and feared creatures, the cyclops, was real?
11:11The cyclops were ferocious and huge man-eating giants
11:16that only had one great eye in the center of their forehead.
11:21These are the smiths of the gods.
11:24These are the ones who work underneath volcanoes.
11:28It explains why you have all of the fire coming out of volcanoes.
11:33They made the helmet of invisibility of Hades.
11:36They made all of the weapons and tools.
11:38Legends of the cyclops are tied to ancient Greeks
11:42and brought to life in tales like the Odyssey,
11:45written by a poet named Homer.
11:48In that story, a hero named Odysseus leads his men into a cave
11:53where all hell breaks loose when a one-eyed shepherd
11:56named Polyphemus returns from his fields with an appetite.
12:01Polyphemus comes in and immediately picks up two of the men
12:06and munches them down as a snack because they're tasty.
12:11Odysseus and his men take this one big huge stick
12:14and they sharpen it at one end and then they hide.
12:18So when the cyclops comes back this time,
12:20he again eats a couple of the men,
12:22but this time Odysseus talks to him and says,
12:27well, would you like some wine?
12:29Polyphemus drinks until he starts to get drunk
12:33and then promises Odysseus as a guest friend gift,
12:39I'll eat you last.
12:41And he falls asleep.
12:42So as soon as he's asleep Odysseus and the men take this
12:46sharpened huge stick and they heat it up in the fire
12:50till the point is burning hot and hard
12:53and then they ram it into the cyclops' eye.
12:57While legends say the cyclops traded an eye
13:00for the ability to see the future,
13:02it seems that was a fatal mistake.
13:05One eye was the monster's greatest weakness.
13:09But is it possible these freaks of nature actually existed?
13:15Science says yes.
13:17There's a very rare genetic defect known as cyclocephalia.
13:22The orbital eye sockets merge and form one great eye.
13:26Now typically these aberrations are stillborn.
13:30But there have been a few cases where these creatures have actually lived for a period of days.
13:35Something like this could give life to the cyclops mythology.
13:39That's one explanation.
13:42But there could be another.
13:44Perhaps there's a clue found in their alleged occupation.
13:48Toiling under volcanoes making weapons.
13:52Blacksmiths working on these forges, you know, they usually covered one eye with a patch
13:58so that the sparks and the flames wouldn't destroy both of their eyes.
14:02So I think a good number of them might have been one-eyed.
14:05But that doesn't explain the discovery of fossils like this one.
14:10It's at least three million years old
14:13and belonged to an immense creature standing nine feet tall
14:17and weighing six tons.
14:19To ancient Greeks, bones like these proved the cyclops were real.
14:25Since they didn't know what dinosaurs looked like
14:28or what other creatures looked like, they would assemble them to look like men.
14:31The ribcages would be put together and these would be very, very big creatures.
14:35Scientists today have another explanation.
14:38Elephant skulls.
14:40They possess a giant cavity in the center that represents the nasal cavity.
14:45And this could have been interpreted as an eye socket.
14:49So it's not hard to imagine how people discovering these ancient elephant skulls
14:54created or conceived this cyclops-like, human-like giant.
14:58In Greece, there's a monster, part man and part bull, that supposedly hunted and devoured unlucky children.
15:22It sounds made up, but could this elaborate maze of hand-carved tunnels hidden from the world
15:34and recently discovered be the real layer of the Minotaur?
15:38I think what scares us about the Minotaur is that we're dealing with something that is almost human, but not quite human.
15:53He's just raw power. He's just straight up just evil.
15:57The myth of the Minotaur begins with the sea god Poseidon, who sends a magnificent white bull as a sign of approval to King Minos.
16:07He ruled an advanced society on the Greek island of Crete that we now call the Minoans.
16:13Poseidon told King Minos to sacrifice the bull, but the king couldn't part with such a prize.
16:21Bad idea. So, as punishment for Minos not sacrificing the bull, Poseidon got Aphrodite to cast a powerful love spell on Minos' wife.
16:32Fell in love with this bull.
16:33She asked a family handyman to build her a mechanical cow suit so she could, like, get it on with this bull.
16:39Nine months later, she gives birth to a baby who's half man, half bull. It's a Minotaur.
16:45What's Minos to do with this untamable and ravenous stepson?
16:51Hide it and trap it.
16:54The king orders construction of a maze called the Labyrinth to house the beast.
16:59Once locked inside, it feeds on a steady diet of human sacrifices from Athens.
17:06He calls these sacrifices tributes.
17:10And if this sounds familiar, it's because it is part of the inspiration for the Hunger Games.
17:17In Greek mythology, Theseus, Athens' greatest hero, volunteers to kill the Minotaur.
17:25His father, King Aegeus, gives Theseus his sword to slay the beast.
17:32He sails to Crete and immediately catches the eye of King Minos' daughter, Ariadne, who promises to help him.
17:41She gave him a ball of yarn so he could unravel the yarn and never get lost in the maze.
17:47Theseus tracks down the Minotaur, slays him with a sword, and saves the kids in the maze.
17:54Then he uses the yarn to retrace his steps out of the labyrinth.
18:00Theseus escapes by ship, but forgets to do one thing, put up white sails so his father will know he survived.
18:09When King Aegeus doesn't see the sails, he kills himself by jumping into the sea, which is today called the Aegean Sea as a tribute.
18:19Theseus goes home to take over his father's kingdom.
18:24Because in Greece, every story has to end in a son taking over his father's land.
18:29There's at least a kernel of truth behind every myth.
18:34And some basis in reality behind the giant beasts that haunt them.
18:39It's impossible to mate a human with a bull.
18:42So what could have inspired the Minotaur?
18:45Some believe what was entrapped in the labyrinth could actually be the human child of King Minos's wife's affair.
18:52A bastard child he built an elaborate story around to hide.
19:01Others think it could just be symbolic of one of the many bull cults popular in the Mediterranean at the time.
19:07Some of which involved blood being poured over initiates, while others were even worse.
19:16A ritual that the Minoans practiced that involved wearing a totem of a bull, so that you had a man with a bull's head.
19:28People have suggested that there might have been human sacrifice tied to this.
19:32This all begs a question.
19:35If the Minotaur was based on an imprisoned boy, or victims of a bloody ritual, could the labyrinth have existed too?
19:46Archaeologists have long thought the legend was inspired by a twisted pattern of rooms at Kenosis Palace.
19:53The political center of the Minoans, for whom bulls were sacred.
20:02But now, 30 miles away from Kenosis near Crete's ancient city of Gorten, a complex set of caves was recently rediscovered.
20:11Some now believe this is the real basis for the labyrinth and the legend of the Minotaur.
20:16It's a very big mass of rooms, corridors, about 10 or 12 kilometers long.
20:26That's about seven and a half miles.
20:31Spelunkers believe this place was built for one great purpose.
20:35I think they excavated the stones to leave the Minotaur inside this.
20:50There are a lot, a lot, hundreds of inscriptions.
20:55Something like that.
20:57You know, I think this date is original, not fake.
21:02There's also evidence on another evil Rome this maze, the Nazis.
21:10During World War II, they stored weapons and ammunition here as they took control of the Greek peninsula.
21:18When the Nazis finally evacuated Crete in 1945, they blew up most of their ammunition stockpiles.
21:25But they left these deadly souvenirs behind.
21:31As for the Minotaur, the mystery remains.
21:35Was the legend inspired by an imprisoned boy, a bloody ritual, or a real creature?
21:42While the proof remains elusive, some are convinced of one thing.
21:46The story began here.
21:47Perhaps thousands of years ago, there was, you know, a monster.
21:57It's an idea.
21:59For thousands of years, there have been tales of a beast comprised of our greatest fears.
22:18A stalker of women, a slayer of babies, an animal with a bloodthirst for flesh of all kinds.
22:29The powerful body of a lion, the scorpion's tail laced with venomous spikes, the shark's teeth, and of course the face of a man, which is very scary because it tends to give the manticore a sense of intelligence.
22:44How does the manticore lure its prey?
22:47It was said to do so by having a melodious voice that would draw people in.
22:52It sounded very human-like in its voice.
22:54And it sounded like there was a person out there calling to you or singing to you.
22:59It sounded enticing.
23:00So you would go off into the woods in search of them, and then you would be set upon by the manticore.
23:06Could early explorers have encountered a real creature that later went extinct?
23:11Are there clues about the manticore hidden in ancient texts?
23:16Documented accounts of the manticore go back to the 2nd century BC, and a Greek teacher named Flavius Philostratus.
23:24As the hunters gather round in the dusty night, they heard some muffled whistling.
23:37With their weapons ready, the hunters felt their heartbeats rise.
23:43Only one hunter made it back.
23:46He never saw the manticore with his own eyes.
23:48But his columns fell one by one.
23:53Two centuries after this account, the manticore showed up again.
23:56This time in an encyclopedia of sorts called Naturalist Historia, or Natural History.
24:13It was written by a Roman philosopher, a naturalist.
24:17Pliny the Elder believed the manticore to be a very, very real creature.
24:23His ancient text may hold the clues to the existence of the manticore and its very real origin.
24:30The encyclopedia contains descriptions of creatures seen by explorers during Rome's imperial expansion.
24:38People are telling stories in the era before there was photography or recording equipment, so people had to interpret what the stories looked like.
24:47And that's pretty much the manticore.
24:49There's so many different beasts and bestiaries that have creatures that embody different aspects of different animals.
24:57The question is, what could be the real-life basis of these strange creatures?
25:03The truth behind the story of the manticore is the Bengal tiger, a truly terrifying, man-eating, dangerous beast that lives in India, just like the story says.
25:14The hunting of tigers was considered to be a major thing to be done.
25:17It was the sport of kings to go out there and try to hunt them down.
25:21When early explorers first set eyes on a tiger, they searched for the right words to describe these terrifying creatures.
25:29Adjectives only went so far.
25:32People have to describe it by comparison to something else.
25:36For example, the hippopotamus, we think of this big fat thing, but the word actually means river horse.
25:41Some ancient Greek who saw one of those big fat things thought that it looked more like a horse than anything else they could think of.
25:48The manticore may be based on real reports, or perhaps just the product of a storyteller's ripe imagination.
25:57A storytelling adage is that if you want to tell a good story, you take two familiar things and you combine them in a really weird way.
26:03The person who's hearing this can imagine those two things, stick them together and say, wow, that's fascinating, tell me more.
26:09The question that everyone asks when they come upon one of these stories is, is it true or is it not true?
26:15The only real answer is yes, it's true and it's not true.
26:19And that's what makes them resonate for us and that's what sends shivers up our spine.
26:26Grendel haunts a Norse saga written around 800 AD called Beowulf.
26:46It's a hero versus villain story that reflects the age in which it was written.
26:52But what exactly does this legendary tale, petted man against beast, reveal about the culture of Germanic warriors?
27:01And could clues recently dug up in Denmark prove that this monster actually stalked people in the icy north?
27:09That it wasn't just a literary threat, but a literal one?
27:14There's this famous king named Rathgar.
27:17He has this beautiful hall, just great hall, where he feasts with his men and Grendel.
27:23He's just tormented by all of the joy and all the happiness that emanates from the hall.
27:29He does not get to partake of the feasting and so he is taking revenge on Rathgar.
27:38He walks on two feet. He has an arm with a hand that has large iron sharp claws.
27:45We know that he can eat up an entire warrior in a few bites.
27:52Beowulf shows up and says, I want to fight the monster. And they let him.
27:57This big battle ensues and they almost thrash the entire hall, but finally Beowulf managed to rip his claw off by the socket.
28:09And so he's mortally wounded and returns to his kind of hole in the ground with his mother and dies.
28:15Scholars have not been able to trace Beowulf's exploits to a specific warrior.
28:20But experts have found clues that there may be more truth to the saga than originally thought.
28:26Set in a very historical and social cultural world, it's actually in Denmark with kings whose names we can trace to be actual kings of Denmark.
28:37So that there's this historical matrix surrounding all the monster fights.
28:44Today, some archeologists believe a banquet hall discovered in Lyra could be connected to a real King Rathgar.
28:52There's a long, long tradition that somehow this hall in Lyra has a monster or a ghost or a troll or something, and that's Grendel.
29:06Some archeologists discovered the Danish monarchy abandoned the hall and rebuilt another 500 meters away.
29:14But why?
29:16Some believe the Danes were trying to distance themselves from a deadly enemy, but perhaps not a monster in the truest sense.
29:25Grendel may have been based on a disease that came in and people didn't really know how to explain this disease.
29:33And so they anthropomorphized it into a monster that shows up.
29:40Diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis ran rampant around 800 AD.
29:47And new diseases are monsters we still fight today.
29:51You look in developing countries and you still see a ramping spread of contagious diseases.
29:56They are still attributing the disease to monstrous forces.
30:00You see that happening just right now, you know, with the spread of Ebola.
30:03Some experts believe Grendel isn't just a literary symbol or a representation of a deadly disease,
30:10but is based on another mysterious giant that once roamed the Earth.
30:17There are many cryptozoologists who feel that accounts of Grendel pertain to modern sightings or descriptions of things like the Sasquatch, Bigfoot and the Yeti.
30:28There were, in fact, giant human-like creatures that lived in our fossil history hundreds of thousands of years ago.
30:36If we do have even a cultural memory of coexisting with these giants, it would explain many of the giant legends that we have.
30:46I think there is this kind of evolutionary memory of really big things that you had to be afraid of.
30:52And we had to find some way of getting them under control.
30:55And I think one way of doing that is to create these myths about monsters.
31:16At a hospital in a Cleveland suburb called Kirtland, a mysterious doctor is said to have taken in orphans.
31:31But did he have their best interests at heart?
31:34There's supposedly the classic mad scientist, evil doctor, Dr. Crow, who was said to be doing experiments on people.
31:46According to legend, Dr. Crow injected substances that made the children's heads swell to the breaking point.
31:55The experiments created a race of voracious mutants known as melon heads said to haunt the Midwest from Ohio to Michigan.
32:04Did a mad scientist actually spawn a gang of feral beasts?
32:09The answer has something to do with the real Nazi doctor known as the angel of death.
32:16The melon heads are described as diminutive hairless creatures with enormous bulbous heads, large glowing eyes, and tiny little bodies.
32:26That shape seen in the dark would be truly terrifying.
32:31As the story goes, they turn to inbreeding and prey upon and even eat anyone or anything foolish enough to venture close.
32:41People say they swear that they've seen them do things like, you know, eat other children or eat animals, attack them, and just tear them apart.
32:50There is also another version of the story in which the children Dr. Crow works with are actually born deformed with a condition called hydrocephaly.
33:01The brain cavity fills up with fluid and causes the skull to expand and gives you this giant deformed head.
33:09The fluid pressure would cause the brain to be squashed and this would cause some damage.
33:14It's estimated hydrocephaly affects two to five children and every 1,000 births.
33:21Rare, but deeply disturbing when it occurs.
33:25I believe that humans have an instinctual fear or discomfort with birth defects.
33:31And I think it really is a reflection on ourselves.
33:34In the version of the story where the kids are born deformed, people are cruel and taunt the children whose ghosts go on to haunt the woods forever.
33:43Seeking revenge.
33:45This is an example of how we as a people create a monster.
33:49We, you know, we see something that is strange to us.
33:52We don't understand it.
33:54We fear it because we don't understand it.
33:56And then we start building mythology around that.
33:59While hydrocephaly is real, the legend of a mad doctor named Dr. Crow and melon-headed orphans in the woods may not be.
34:11There's no photographs.
34:12There's no physical evidence.
34:13It's just this legend.
34:14But there is still a historical basis for this story.
34:19A real man whom Dr. Crow was likely based on.
34:23The Nazi experiments of Joseph Mengele and other Nazi doctors certainly must have had some contribution to this.
34:30In 1943, Joseph Mengele began conducting experiments on children and other prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
34:40Infecting them with typhus and other diseases to test the limits of their immunity.
34:46Once the horrors of the Holocaust begin to be made public after the war, you begin to get this sort of stock character of the mad doctor.
34:59And that comes about in large part because of the revelations of the Holocaust.
35:03Melon heads tap into a lot of our fears.
35:06Our deep fear of the woods.
35:09Of birth defects.
35:11Of bad medicine.
35:13And of science in general.
35:15We love science because of all the things it can give us.
35:18But at the same time we distrust it.
35:20We often think that it's doing something that could harm us.
35:23What could we become if things go wrong?
35:26If somebody tampered with us?
35:27Could we become the monster as well?
35:29That is a central part of the fear we have of these creatures.
35:50Humanzes are a creature that is a hybrid between a human and a chimp.
35:57Some of the myths about humanzes were that these were going to be created in order to make super soldiers.
36:02In the 1960s, many scientists were convinced they had discovered a real life humanzee.
36:09His name was Oliver.
36:11And he liked whiskey, women, and TV.
36:15There were allegations at that time that Oliver possessed 47 chromosomes.
36:20Which is actually halfway between a human and a chimpanzee.
36:24Our ancestors split from chimpanzees about 4 to 6 million years ago.
36:30But is it possible Oliver was the missing link?
36:34In 1996, a scientist took blood samples to figure out how human Oliver really was.
36:42Outwardly, Oliver didn't seem to pose a threat.
36:46But one man believed that by toying with genetics, he could help develop a man-ape race of warriors with superhuman strength, agility, and anger.
36:57In the 1920s, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin allegedly turned to a scientist to create an all-powerful army of humanzes.
37:07He asked Ilya Ivanov, Russia's top animal breeding scientist, to get to work on his fantasy.
37:14And in 1926, the Russian government took Stalin's idea one step further, passing an official request to the Academy of Science to build a living war machine.
37:26He was trying to create a humanzee and he attempted this through a process of artificial insemination.
37:35First, by introducing the semen from a male human into a female chimpanzee.
37:41And later, by taking the semen from an orangutan and introducing it into the uterus of a willing human volunteer.
37:49I don't know how you answer that ad, you know.
37:53A woman wanted to be impregnated by a gorilla.
37:55I'll do that.
37:56The Soviet experiments ultimately failed.
37:59The Russian scientist who proposed this idea fell out of favor and found himself being shipped off to a work camp where he died.
38:07Can humans and primates reproduce?
38:10Or is that simply the stuff of science fiction?
38:15Interbreeding some species is possible.
38:18Horses and donkeys produce mules, but mules are sterile.
38:22They can't produce offspring, which is the definition of a species.
38:27As we're lions and tigers, we know can.
38:29You can have ligers or you can have tigons.
38:31Usually the hybrids are not fertile.
38:33So you're not going to be able to breed an army of these and then have them self-perpetuate.
38:37So what about humans and apes?
38:40While humans and primates have the right plumbing to physically attempt to procreate, they're too far apart genetically to produce offspring.
38:52In the end, genetic tests conducted on Oliver in 1996 showed that at least genetically speaking, Oliver was all chimp.
39:02In today's brave new world of genetic manipulation, humanzes may no longer be the stuff of science fiction.
39:11Somebody out there who's doing cloning, they have the skill and the ability to make a humanze.
39:16And I think part of the problem is, with creatures like humanzes, is that we fear being replaced.
39:22If a better creature comes along, we're going to be out of the picture.
39:26It's an interesting ethical question because, you know, should we in fact explore that, do that, build that, make that?
39:35Should we?
39:36Science always answers, yes, we should.
39:39But we as civilized people sometimes wonder whether we actually should be taking that step.
39:56The way, so we can understand it.
39:57The thing is to be a tool that we are trying to accomplish, do that, take a step.
40:06The way are we trying to accomplish the path in this way.
40:09If we don't want to do things, we'll do it because we can assume of these things that we're trying to accomplish.
40:12If we don't want to make these animals, we can't do it because it's going to the beautiful give up.
40:14And if it's all about them, we can't do it because we're trying to accomplish that.
Be the first to comment