Ilya Ivanov, Cross-Breeding Apes, and Stalin
Some of the scientific tomfoolery that helped make Carl Denham's giant ape "fiction"
For a sense of the environment into which King Kong and the discovery of “Skull Island” emerged, let’s meet Ilya Ivanov.
Ilya Ivanov was a Russian and Soviet biologist who specialized in the field of artificial insemination and the interspecific hybridization of animals. He’s famous for his controversial attempts to create a human-ape hybrid by inseminating three female chimpanzees with human sperm.
No. I’m not kidding.
From the New York Times circa 2005:
In the mid-1920's, the culture wars were dominated - as they are today with "intelligent design" - by the debate between creationism and evolutionary thinking. In 1925, John T. Scopes had been found guilty of teaching that mankind arose from something other than divine creation. But the United States was not the only country passionate about the issue. The young Soviet Union, in its effort to stamp out religion, was determined to prove that men were descended from apes. In 1926, a Soviet scientist named Ilya Ivanov decided the most compelling way to do this would be to breed a humanzee: a human-chimpanzee hybrid.
Indeed, Ivanov carried out a series of experiments to create a human/nonhuman ape hybrid. Three female chimpanzees were inseminated with human sperm; he failed to create a pregnancy. In 1929, he organized a set of experiments involving nonhuman ape sperm and human volunteers (!) but, alas, was delayed by the death of his last orangutan.
In the course of a general political shakeup in the Soviet scientific world, Ivanov — and several scientists involved in primate research and experiments — lost their positions.
Things got worse. In Spring of 1930, Ivanov and his veterinary institute came under political criticism. Finally, on December 13, 1930, Ivanov was arrested and sentenced to five years of exile at Alma Ata, where he worked for the Kazakh Veterinary-Zoologist Institute until he died from a stroke on March 20th, 1932.
A year later, the first King Kong movie opened in New York. The New Yorker magazine took time to note that it regretted “the need felt for a plot and love interest.” The hint of interspecies copulation was repugnant in the context of Ivanov’s recent notoriety.
These were just a few of the issues that complicated examination of the particulars surrounding the animal brought back from “Skull Island” — and made it an event best swept under the proverbial rug.
And, yes, there is more. Stay tuned …
Note to readers and subscribers: After an extended “hibernation” period, reports from and about the Denham Restoration Project are now resuming via this Substack. Stay tuned …
More? Yes!