orbyss
in
wtf_nature
OLIVER
OLIVER
Oliver is a personal favourite of mine. Although I know he's a classic and almost everyone is likely to know about him, I wanted to post an entry pertaining to him because, to me, he is quite truly WTF...for a chimpanzee, at least.
He got publicity because he could walk erect, and chose to do so most of the time. He was also intelligent, and so both of those attributes earned him fame as being a possible human-chimp hybrid. To me, though, he's just as odd, seeing as how his DNA matches almost completely with that of a subspecies of normal chimpanzee. Why, then, did he not only choose to walk upright, but was capable of doing it almost exclusively. Why was he rejected by other chimps, and why did he smell different from them? Why did he look substantially different?
If nothing else, it goes to show just how little can change in DNA sequencing to bring out what we consider 'human' qualities. I personally think it puts a new spin on just how difficult our evolution really was. Or, if you're not into that kind of thing, he's still a SIDE-SHOW CHIMP.
Here's the well-known documentary about Oliver:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6