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This is a list of genetic hybrids which is limited to well documented cases of animals of differing species able to create hybrid offspring which may or may not be infertile. Hybrids should not be confused with genetic chimeras , such as that between sheep and goat known as the geep .
A mule is a sterile hybrid of a male donkey and a female horse.Mules are smaller than horses but stronger than donkeys, making them useful as pack animals.. In biology, a hybrid is the offspring resulting from combining the qualities of two organisms of different varieties, subspecies, species or genera through sexual reproduction.
Hybrid incompatibility occurs when the offspring of two closely related species are not viable or suffer from infertility. Charles Darwin posited that hybrid incompatibility is not a product of natural selection, stating that the phenomenon is an outcome of the hybridizing species diverging, rather than something that is directly acted upon by selective pressures. [4]
Hybrid speciation in animals is primarily homoploid. While thought not to be very common, a few animal species are the result of hybridization, mostly insects such as tephritid fruitflies that inhabit Lonicera plants [20] and Heliconius butterflies, [21] [22] as well as some fish, [15] one marine mammal, the clymene dolphin, [23] a few birds.
Hybrid sterility can be caused by different closely related species breeding and producing offspring. These animals are usually sterile due to the different numbers of chromosomes between the two parents. The imbalance results in offspring that is viable but not fertile, as is the case with the mule.
One example of this is the desert grassland whiptail lizard, a hybrid of two other species. Typically hybrids are infertile but through parthenogenesis this species has been able to develop stable populations. [28] Gynogenesis is a form of obligate parthenogenesis where a sperm cell is used to initiate reproduction. However, the sperm's genes ...
Human-alien hybrids fill science fiction stories, and the most famous of these is Mr. Spock from Star Trek — the logical science officer of the starship Enterprise.
For hybrids between two species of the genus Panthera (lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards), see Panthera hybrid. There are no known hybrids between Neofelis (the clouded leopard) and other genera. By contrast, many genera of Felinae are interfertile with each other, though few hybridize under natural conditions, and not all combinations are ...