

Why all great apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes, but we only have 23 - instantramen
http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm

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bediger
This is very cool. Once you find out about chromosome pairs (high school
biology in USA's public schools) a lot of things about Mendelian inheritance
fall into place. But if you've got any curiosity, you start to wonder about
the 23-pair vs 24-pair thing.

One question this article doesn't answer is "How does this work in a breeding
population?"

Most chromosomal abnormalities cause spontaneous abortions, and the ones that
don't (Down's Syndrome, etc) would seem to cause some pretty non-adaptive
problems.

So how would a merger of 2 pairs of chromosomes start to breed true in a
population?

