...that mud was covering Mudinho's body (what evidence led to this conclusion? Why isn't @John J. pointing out we have nothing to back that theory, besides our imagination? No witness to say he did that once in his life?
Absolutely, I have no evidence for this whatsoever. But people can get muddy, and people with severe learning disabilities might sometimes be more prone to "odd" play/ behaviour than adults without learning disabilities, and might be less aware of their personal appearance.
I don't think the idea that Luis (or at least his hair) was smeared in mud or other gunk, and that this was a major factor in the girls' account, is particularly
likely, but it
might be a possibility.
The girls seeing and misidentifying a monkey or ape is also a possibility, and equally "we have nothing to back that theory, besides our imagination", but that theory also requires misperception, I think.
External Quote:
The chacma baboon is perhaps the longest species of monkey, with an adult body length of 50 to 115 cm (20 to 45 in) and tail length of 45 to 84 cm (18 to 33 in). ...the chacma baboon appears to be the largest extant monkey.
Wikipedia, Chacma baboon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chacma_baboon
It must be unlikely that an abandoned lot was devoid of depth/ scale cues.
If the girls were accurately reporting what was objectively there, and it was a baboon, they didn't notice the tail or the very pronounced muzzle, an obvious and striking feature of adult baboons. The girls reported bumps on the head, but not a muzzle/ snout.
The traits to analyze (not considering the rest, which include bulging red eyes, stuff that looked like horns, hands/legs different, brown skin) are:
– Two holes where the nose should be
– A very small mouth
Nothing like a baboon.
All this talk about how flawed the human memory, perception, etc. are is BS and nonsense, because it assumes our experience in 100% of cases need to be discarded
No-one here has claimed all human memory and perception is flawed, or anything close to that.
But perception can be imperfect or misleading, that's why we have the word "misperception". Equally, recall can be imperfect.
This isn't contentious or some new finding. It isn't BS.
some members are going to say is that we have definitive proof no chimeras or biological experiments existed in history
We can't prove a negative. But we can try to make informed judgements about unlikely claims and theories.
"Chimera" has different meanings in science, medicine and in popular understanding of that term. Chimerism exists in humans where cells from different genotype embryos fuse in utero; the resulting individual has tissues of two genotypes,
Wikipedia, Human chimera.
Xenotransplantation, the introduction of cells, organs or other tissue from one species to another- has been done, though rejection is a huge problem. The use of animal bone (treated to kill living cells) in humans, xenografting, is a known technique. Research into using e.g. genetically modified pig organs for human recipients appears to be ongoing. The fact that this research
is ongoing- it is not a mature technology- strongly indicates that the technology/ techniques required to create a viable human-animal hybrid, surviving for some years, has not been reached.
Popular use of "chimera" tends to mean a cross-species hybrid with clearly visible traits from two or more species.
This is what we are thinking about if discussing chimeras in the context of the Varginha sighting.
No human-animal chimeras, in this use of the term, exist in the scientific literature,* and there is no other real-world evidence for them.
If the three women saw a person or other primate of approximately human adult size, it would have to be several years old**, so not only was a viable human-animal chimera created in the 1980s or early 90s, presumably by well-resourced researchers with world-leading abilities, it was raised over several years in complete secrecy. With no evidence. And then allowed to escape into Varginha.
What we know about genetics, reproductive technologies and related fields (e.g. cloning) rules out a human-animal chimera in the 1980s or 1990s, and probably now. It must be vastly unlikely that the leading talents in these fields are actually unknown figures working in a shadow world of illicit research, years or decades ahead of their mainstream peers working in well-funded laboratories. How was the genius of the rogue researchers recognised, before they became known for their abilities? How were they recruited? Where are they now? It is a conspiracy theory.
*With the important exception of
sapiens/
neanderthalensis hybridisation, made possible by the very similar genotypes of those two groups of humans. Genetic evidence for this is strong and some fossil remains have anatomical features that
might be evidence of sapiens-neanderthalensis hybridisation. Modern cross-species hybrids exist between different species that are genetically very close, usually sharing a recent common ancestor, e.g. amongst different equines (zonkeys etc.) big cats (tigons, ligers etc.)
**Unless we invoke the even more unlikely concept of scientists developing a way of producing "adult" creatures in a short span of time, common in science fiction (and of course a major feature in Shelley's
Frankenstein).
