Why do humans have 46 chromosomes?

Evolutionarily speaking, why do humans have 46 chromosomes. This is a question of why human have 10 fingers. There is nothing magical about 10 fingers and nothing magical about having 46 chromosomes. In fact there are people who have 44 chromosomes. The are normal people. They have normal fertility. read more

Because the vast majority of humans have only 46 chromosomes in each cell, except for the sperm and eggs, which have 23 chromosomes. A small number of humans may have 44, or 48 chromosomes and not even know it. Our DNA is arraigned into 23 pairs of chromosomes, but contain hundreds of thousands of genes. Humans do not have the largest genome of any living thing, despite what some people assume. The organism with the largest genome is likely the plant Paris japonica - Wikipedia. read more

In humans, each cell normally contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46. Twenty-two of these pairs, called autosomes, look the same in both males and females. The 23rd pair, the sex chromosomes, differ between males and females. Females have two copies of the X chromosome, while males have one X and one Y chromosome. read more