Stalin's Humanzee

Catnip

The ugly side of a beautiful world

By: Andrew Austin

Issue date: 10/25/07 Section: WildLife

Ape Escape

Primates aren't really taking over the world ...are they? Documents released from Moscow show that in the 1920s, Joseph Stalin (here at the Wildcat we just call him "Joe") commissioned biologist Ilya Ivanov to create a race of half-man, half-ape soldiers called "humanzees." Stalin requested, "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat." Unfortunately, the experiment fell through before Ivanov could artificially inseminate any of the human females with ape sperm.

For his failure at the expense of the Motherland, Ivanov was sentenced to five years of exile in Kazakistan.

Now, with cloning, we're less than a decade away from a monkey army becoming a reality. Fear-mongers might overexaggerate the ethical problems and threat to our safety this might cause, but at least the beasts would behave better than Blackwater.