Rare Hybrid Animals

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Animals occasionally mate with members of another species, and nature occasionally endorses the match with a hybrid. Humans have taken advantage of hybridization to create striking oddities for centuries, mostly for the purposes of entertainment. And while these animals are often unhealthy and irrelevant to conservation efforts, hybridization is a natural phenomenon.

Species have been hybridizing all over the world throughout evolutionary history, and researchers regularly add new ones to the scientific record. From pizzly bears to wolphins, here are 10 of the strangest animal hybrids.

Competition for forest space may be behind the outlandish mix, with shrinking habitats driving male proboscis monkeys to take over langur groups. Hybrids are usually infertile, but researchers noted that the proboscis-langur cross appeared to be nursing an infant.

When a polar bear (Ursus maritimus) and a grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) mate, they can create hybrids called "pizzly" or "grolar" bears. Although rare in nature, these pizzly bear hybrids are starting to spread across the Arctic due to climate change.

Starving polar bears are heading farther south to find more food, while the warming world is allowing adaptable grizzlies to expand northward. This movement is leading to more interactions between the two species and more mating.

Humans have created a variety of hybrid cats by breeding different species together in captivity. The results are oddities like giant ligers (lion-tiger hybrids) and tiny pumapards (puma-leopard hybrids). Conservation experts condemn this deliberate crossing as unethical and say the hybrids won't help wildlife conservation efforts. However, it proves that different wild cats can mix.

A 2016 study published in the journal Genome Research found evidence of ancient cat hybridization, which may have shaped the evolution of modern-day cats. This historical interbreeding may help to explain why so many hybrid cat combinations are possible in captivity today.

Veterinary staff in southern Brazil couldn't figure out whether they were caring for a dog or a fox when an unknown animal came in for treatment in 2021. The creature, dubbed "dogxim," shared traits from both a domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) and a pampas fox (Lycalopex gymnocercus). It turned out to be the first known dog-fox hybrid, The Telegraph reported.

Pampas foxes are more closely related to dogs than some other foxes, such as the red fox (Vulpes vulpes). However, researchers think this was the first time a dog mixed with a species outside of the Canis genus. The hybrid also represented the first case of a domestic dog breeding with a wild canid of any kind in South America, according to an August 2023 study about the hybrid published in the journal Animals.

In the 1980s, an Inuit hunter shot three strange whales. The animals possessed the front fins of a beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas), the tail of a narwhal (Monodon monoceros) and teeth that appeared to be a mix of both. The hunter saved a skull from one of the creatures, and researchers later confirmed it was the first beluga-narwhal hybrid, or narluga, on record.

Narwhal and beluga ranges overlap in the Arctic for some of the year. And although these two species don't normally mix, researchers found a single male narwhal living among a pod of belugas, CBC News previously reported.

Wolves, dogs and coyotes are all capable of breeding with one another to create hybrids. This mixing usually happens in captivity, with humans forcing different canids together, but the three have also crossed in the wild.

Hungarian scientists accidentally created the "impossible" hybrid fish in 2019 by crossing spiky-finned Russian sturgeons (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii) and long-nosed American paddlefish (Polyodon spathula). The two species haven't shared a common ancestor for 184 million years and aren't even in the same family. So the researchers weren't expecting hybrid offspring when they used American paddlefish sperm to trigger asexual reproduction (in which only female DNA is passed on) in Russian sturgeon. To their surprise, the paddlefish sperm fused with hundreds of sturgeon eggs, and the "sturddlefish" was born.

Wolphins are interesting hybrids with a misleading name. There are a few members of the dolphin family with "whale" in their name that can hybridize with other dolphin species. But while the offspring are called "wolphins," they're dolphin hybrids rather than crosses between a giant baleen whale and a dolphin, as the name might suggest.

The first hybrid to carry the wolphin name was the offspring of a false killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens) and an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) at Sea Life Park Hawaii. Since then, humans have bred a number of other dolphin hybrids in captivity, and very occasionally, wild populations also produce them. For example, researchers spotted the hybrid offspring of a melon-headed whale (Peponocephala electra) and a rough-toothed dolphin (Steno bredanensis) off Hawaii in 2017.

Modern humans (Homo sapiens) once lived alongside other human lineages, such as Neanderthals and the mysterious Denisovans. With Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in our genome, we know that modern humans interbred with these other archaic humans before they went extinct.

There's also evidence that Neanderthals and Denisovans crossed with each other. A 2018 study in the journal Nature found that a 90,000-year-old bone discovered in a Siberian cave represented a first-generation hybrid between a Neanderthal and a Denisovan. Researchers still have a lot to learn about human evolution and our extinct relatives, but the evidence so far points to plenty of hybrids in our past.

Patrick Pester is a freelance writer and previously a staff writer at Live Science. His background is in wildlife conservation and he has worked with endangered species around the world. Patrick holds a master's degree in international journalism from Cardiff University in the U.K."}), " -0-10/js/authorBio.js"); } else console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); Patrick PesterSocial Links NavigationLive Science ContributorPatrick Pester is a freelance writer and previously a staff writer at Live Science. His background is in wildlife conservation and he has worked with endangered species around the world. Patrick holds a master's degree in international journalism from Cardiff University in the U.K.

If you've never seen a zebroid before, you might think your eyes are deceiving you. But the part zebra, part equine animal isn't something out of a sci-fi film. Zebroids are hybrid animals, a cross between two species.

Hybrid animals, also called crossbreeds, are the offspring of two different or closely related species. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal Welfare Act and Animal Welfare Regulations:

These hybrids can occur naturally, but they can also be the result of artificial insemination. Research shows that hybridization may be quite the rare occurrence, at about 1 percent frequency. However, some researchers have estimated frequencies as high as 10 percent.

While some hybrid pairings result in fertile offspring, crossbreeds usually cannot reproduce. The parent species may not have the same genetic makeup, meaning the offspring's chromosomes may not match up, leaving them infertile.

Grolar bears are a mix of male grizzly bears and female polar bears. Pizzly bears come from a male polar bear and a female grizzly bear. Typically, these two species do not live in the same environment, but climate change has altered that. Grolar and pizzly bears are capable of having hybrid offspring.

Leopon are the offspring of a male leopard and female lion. They are part of the Panthera hybrid, which is a cross between any two Panthera species, which includes jaguar, leopard, snow leopard, lion and tiger. Again, leopons are exceptionally rare, so we were unable to find an image.

For well over a month, the internet has been buzzing with rumors surrounding a mysteriously pregnant stingray and the idea that she might be incubating a type of never-before-seen offspring: shark-stingray hybrid babies.

In 2022, when the narwhal was 12 years old and reaching sexual maturity, some began to suggest the out-of-place animal might mate with a beluga and produce narluga calves. If the narwhal fits in well enough with the male belugas, he might join an alliance with them and collectively court female whales.

Now, some scientists have expressed concerns that polar bears could get bred out of existence if they keep interacting with grizzlies. Others say that in a distant, warmer future, perhaps no bears will be able to survive at high latitudes. But on the flip side, some suggest the hybrid offspring might be more equipped to live in a world altered by climate change.

But a few notable individuals have made headlines: Scientists glimpsed a rare hybrid of a rough-toothed dolphin and melon-headed whale near Hawaii in 2018. And a creature that appeared to be part bottlenose and part striped dolphin was spotted off the coast of Falmouth, England, last August and thought to be a first-ever sighting for the United Kingdom.

Wolves were exterminated from most of the Northeast by the mid-1800s, and their numbers were at record lows around the Great Lakes by the early 20th century, per the National Park Service. Fewer wolves meant fewer potential mates, so they likely turned to coyotes to breed.

The hybrid animals also seem to be taking on increasingly wolf-like characteristics. They are becoming larger and more adaptable, and the canines are now poised to fill the role of an apex predator on the East Coast.

You might have probably heard about the most common animal hybrid between a female horse and a male donkey, called a mule, but did you know there are more of these mixed animals? Though this kind of species and breeds crossing does not usually appear in nature, with the intervention of humans, we now have zonkeys, ligers, and Savannah cats. These animals are typically infertile, with some exceptions, such as the coywolf (not to be confused with a coy wolf), a mix of a coyote and a wolf, and can further reproduce.

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