A TOP evolutionary psychologist believes humans could soon crossbreed with all great apes to create hybrid "hurillas" and "hurangs".

Gorgon Gallup's bombshell claim comes after he alluded to a human-chimpanzee hybrid born in a Florida lab 100 years ago, before doctors killed the "humanzee".

9 A scientist has claimed that a human-chimp hybrid was born and then killed in a Florida lab in the 1920s. Pictured Oliver the chimp. Credit: Wikipedia

The scientist, who teaches biopsychology at the University of Albany in New York, insists crossbreeding is not limited just chimpanzees.

He said: "All of the available evidence - fossil, paleontological and biochemical - including DNA itself, suggests that humans can also breed with gorillas and orangutans.

"Humans and all three of the great apes species are all descended from a single common ape-like ancestry.

"I’ve also coined what would be the appropriate terms to refer to human-gorilla hybrids and human-orangutan hybrids which would be a 'hurilla' and a 'hurang'."

9 Despite claims in the 1970s that Oliver was a human-chimp hybrid, it was proven that the animal was not a humanzee Credit: Corbis - Getty

Gordon Gallup coined the term "humanzee" which refers to a human-chimp crossbreed.

It refers to a scientifically possible hybridisation which was attempted throughout the 20th century.

Gallup, who developed the famous mirror "self-recognition" test which proved primates could acknowledge their own reflection, claims his former university professor told him that a humanzee baby was born at a research facility where he used to work.

Speaking to The Sun Online, he said: “One of the most interesting cases involved an attempt which was made back in the 1920s in what was the first primate research centre established in the US in Orange Park, Florida.

9 A human-chimp hybrid, or 'humanzee', is scientifically possible. File picture showing 1968 film Planet Of The Apes Credit: Rex Features

9 Soviet scientist Ilya Ivanov failed in his controversial attempts to create a humanzee Credit: Wikipedia

"They inseminated a female chimpanzee with human semen from an undisclosed donor and claimed not only that pregnancy occurred but the pregnancy went full term and resulted in a live birth.

"But in the matter of days, or a few weeks, they began to consider the moral and ethical considerations and the infant was euthanised."

Gallup said the professor worked at Yerkes before the research centre moved to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia in 1930.

He added: "He told me the rumour was true. And he was a credible scientist in his own right."

9 Gallup says humans are also able to breed with gorillas and orangutans Credit: University at Albany

The most infamous humanzee project was conducted by Russia biologist Ilya Ivanov - also in the 1920s - who tried and failed to create a Soviet super-soldier using human sperm and female chimps.

Another reported case happened in Maoist China in 1967 where a female primate became pregnant with a human-hybrid only to die from neglect after the lab's scientists were forced to abandon the project following the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution.

Gallup’s term humanzee became well known in the 1970s after the emergence of a creature known as Oliver – a bald chimp who walked on his hind legs.

But tests conducted on Oliver in 1996 proved once and for all that the animal had 48 chromosomes and was therefore not a human-hybrid.

War for the Planet of the Apes, the third chapter of the critically acclaimed franchise

9 Oliver caused a sensation among the scientific community Credit: Getty - Contributor

9 Dr Frans De Wall studies the social behaviour of chimpanzees from his tower overlooking the compound at Yerkes Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta Credit: Alamy

9 Lana, a two-and-a-half-year-old chimpanzee, uses a typewriter-like device to punch out sentences using symbols for words in an experiment in the 1970s Credit: Corbis - Getty

9 Apes are seen going about their business int the Yerkes Primate Research Centre Credit: Emory University

MOST READ IN NEWS SCARED WHITTY-LESS UK faces Covid disaster, top scientists will warn in TV message today Exclusive 'HE'S DEVASTATED' Kyle Walker 'furious' after fiancée admits to lockdown fling with toyboy KEEP CALM Supermarket bosses urge Brits NOT to panic buy & insist there is plenty of stock GRINCHES Mum reveals HUGE Xmas gift haul for daughter - but some parents brand kid 'spoilt' AT OUR WHIT'S END UK could see 50,000 covid cases a day in 3 weeks without new measures XMAS 'GIFT' PM to consider lifting 'rule of six' on Xmas so families can celebrate together

Gallup said: “It was proven that Oliver was not a humanzee despite the fact that he looked very similar in terms of assuming an upright posture and having a protruding nose and all kinds of other things.”

Asked whether he would be in favour of a humanzee being brought into the world, Gallup replied: “I think it’s a fascinating question and I think it would have profound psychological and biological implications.

“But whether the cost would justify the benefit is the other question in this equation.”

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours