Are animals superior to humans?

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…obvious to Walrus, but not to McCarthy, a PhD geneticist, and world-class recognized authority on hybridization genetics
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Walrus forgot to mention where he got his PhD in genetics.
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Maybe Walrus should write to McCarthy, to explain is errors to him.
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Walrus says:

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Again, maybe Walrus should let Dr. McCarthy know about his error.
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Gene sequencing doesn’t reveal Pig ancestry. Nor does it usually reveal back-hybridization. Lack of gene-sequencing evidence doesn’t mean that there’s nothing pig-like about the genes. …only that the sequences don’t show it.
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As McCarthy explains in the quote below, the amount of a gene can make the difference, where nucleotide-sequence wouldn’t show a difference.
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I’m not criticizing Walrus. His error is a very common one, and is completely understandable and excusable.
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Quoting from Dr. McCarthy:
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Walrus says:
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Here’s some video of a Cabbit (Cat-Rabbit hybrid):
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http://www.macroevolution.net/cat-rabbit-hybrids.html
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Or, if you prefer, just go to McCarthy’s macroevolution website, and click the search tab, and search for “Cabbit”. Or go to Mammal Hybrids, and, there, scroll down to interordinal hybrids section, and on down to the Cabbit videos.
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You’ll agree that that video would have been rather difficult to fake.
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Additionally, there’s good evidence for inter-class hybridization. Bird-Mammal.
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The Platypus and the Echidna have a bird-like beak, lay eggs, have the bird-reptile (but non-mammilian) cloaca, and various other avian features. …and some avian DNA. … a number of things about their DNA that are avian rather than mammalian.
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And yes, Platypuses and Echidnas are fertile.
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Below is a link to an article.
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Or, to find that article, and others like it, go to McCarthy’s website, click the search tab (left margin), and search for Platypus.
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Here’s the link.
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http://www.macroevolution.net/bird-mammal-hybrids.html
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There are many, many reports, photos and videos of interordinal mammalian hybrids. Some of the videos, such as the above-posted Cabbit video, are convincing.
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But suppose those other hybrids weren’t fertile.
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Walrus must have meant, “…no record of other fertile inter-ordinal hybridizations among mammals.”
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…because, whether there really are no fertile interordinal mammalian hybrids depends on whether we’re one.
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Try not to use your conclusion as part of your evidence.
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But yes, maybe there are no others. And sure, if there are others, that would support the Pig-Chimp theory.
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Lack of other established instances of fertile interordinal mammal hybridizations would mean that the theory doesn’t have that support.
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Then, any such alleged hybridization would remain in the a-priori very unlikely category. Support for the Pig-Chimp theory would then obviously have to come from another source. …such as the improbability of coincidence, of the many, many differences from all the other primates, where each one of those differences is a similarity to Pigs.
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No one denies that fertile interordinal mammal hybrids can be expected to be either rare or nonexistent. It’s just a question of which of those two it is. Anatomical evidence is helpful, and is typically the only evidence of back-hybridization over many generations.
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…besides: Humans aren’t really that fertile. As I mentioned, humans are inexplicably less fertile than the norm among animals. Humans’ unusual low fertility now, is consistent with having been barely fertile at all, after the first hybridization, before the long period of back-hybridization and the subsequent millions of years of continuing evolution improved fertility.
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An animal’s fertility isn’t simply a Yes/No matter. There can be, and is, graded variation in regards to the likelihood or frequency of pregnancy. The first Pig-Chimp hybrids were surely at least nearly infertile, and the likelihood of pregnancy was small (or none). Unlikely things happen infrequently, but sometimes do happen. Though no one denies that such a fertile hybrid is at least very unlikely, impossibility isn’t proved.
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If there really are no established instances of other fertile interordinal hybrids among mammals, then it’s a question of whether the number is zero or one. That’s a situation where statistics isn’t very helpful in that judgment.
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…and then that’s when other evidence is helpful. Such as the observational evidence of anatomical attributes—which is typically the only evidence of back-hybridization.
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Check McCarthy’s website, or elsewhere, for answers about records of fertile interordinal hybrids, either among mammals, or among other vertebrate classes.
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(If there are records of such hybridizations among other classes of vertebrates, then that would largely let the air out of a claim that it would be impossible for mammals.)
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If the first Pig-Chimp hybrid had been entirely infertile, then of course she’d have no descendants now. If the theory is correct, then she was merely nearly infertile, and something unlikely (but not necessarily impossible) happened, and Homo Sapiens is the result. Surely nearly all interordinal hybrids don’t and didn’t even survive infancy, much less have fertility. As I said, one could be all that was needed.
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Given that it would be expected to be rare, then how many fertile inter-ordinal mammal-hybridizations do you want? Scads of them would certainly help support the theory. …but wouldn’t be expected for such a distant hybridization. No one’s saying it’s common.
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And there’s convincing anatomical evidence (typically the only evidence of back-hybridization after many generations), without an explanation for how else it could occur, other than by a highly improbable coincidence.

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McCarthy, at his website, answers the best arguments of his critics.
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One can find a website saying anything that one is looking for. And the less educated and less qualified the source, the more sure he is, and forceful his language. Consider the academic qualifications and recognized-ness of the author.
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If Walrus wants to cite sources, it would be more helpful if he could just name his best ones (established experts on hybridization-genetics who at least compare to McCarthy).
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…and summarize their arguments in a posting. Either copy and paste it here, or quote it, or say it in your own words.
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Don’t forget to name the source.
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…instead of posting links. It’s common knowledge that it’s inadvisable to click on a link unless you know and trust the person or company who put up the link. (I indicated alternative ways to reach the articles that I linked to).
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Many, most or all of McCarthy’s critics have less status and recognition in hybridization genetics than McCarthy has.
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Anyway, to expect unanimity among scientists whenever a theory is correct, is to show a misunderstanding of how science works.
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McCarthy quotes a lot of agreement with his suggestion.
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McCarthy himself doesn’t say that it’s certain that his suggestion is correct. He refers to it as a theory, and merely presents evidence, and there’s a considerable amount of it that points the same way.
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Primatologists have long been puzzled by the many ways in which we differ from all of the other primates. …and the unexplained relative infertility of humans.
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McCarthy offers an explanation, which explains both.
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And he points out the improbability of it being a coincidence that all of the many characteristic by which we differ from all other primates are characteristics that we have in common with Pigs,.
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…which combines multiplicatively with the probability of the coincidence of the unexplained human infertility, which just happens to be explained by the hybridization theory.
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It’s natural and understandable for people to have a strong negative reaction to a theory that challenges their prior beliefs about their ancestry. People are very sensitive about their ancestry. Look how long it took for general acceptance that we’re related to apes and monkeys. A lot of people still angrily reject evolution (as “obvious hokum”), so this is nothing new.
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Maybe people are again expressing the old resistance to nonhuman ancestry, with only a small script-change.
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Conclusion:
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McCarthy doesn’t claim that his theory is established fact. It’s a theory. He offers the theory as an alternative to the enormously improbable coincidence that the anatomical evidence would otherwise imply.
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Michael Ossipoff

Basically what Puddingmouse said.

Plus the fact that its peaches to pears.

Saying "animals are better than humans" is like saying that "the United States is better than Delaware" (Delaware is a tiny subset of the US itself). Humans are one species, and "animals" are millions of different species. And humans are themselves a type of animal. Its a meaningless comparison.

At least half of us is non-human cells, fungi, yeast, etc. so there's plenty of room to consider many retroviruses at work. Or, if you want something more spunky and soulful, maybe we're the psychedelic mushroom's dog and we became more like our master as we evolved. I'm sure Terence McKenna would have liked that one.