Just thought I’d mention that a mare mule in Colorado just foaled a . Mules are supposedly infertile hybrids of two species (a horse and a donkey), but this one is fertile. They don’t know how many chromosomes the offspring has, so they don’t know whether it’s a horse, a donkey, a mule, a chimera, or something else.
Imagine if, over lots of time and lots of animals, a couple of these are born at the same time and then interbreed. Birth of a new species? Nah.
was the baby mule (foal? i guess there’s probably not even a name for it) born live?
i guess if two mules babies were eventually able to mate, the offspring would still be called a mule. it would still be 1/2 horse and 1/2 donkey.
or maybe a mule-squared? 
Cool.
Birth of a new species?
I thought religious conservatives said that is impossible!
=)
Various large cats (tigers, lions etc) can interbreed and the offspring are usually but not always fertile.
I thought religious conservatives said that is impossible!
Only those that are too ignorant to realize “speciation” (i.e., new species) would HAVE to have occurred at the MOST rapid rate in history following the Noacian flood … in order to arrive the number of species we have currently.
AiG has it all explained.
Ligers, wolphins… and we had squabbits where I went to college.
What exactly are wolphins and squabbits?
And where did you go to college?
they are exactly what they sound like.
I went to both Miamis, but the squabbits were in Ohio.
I have had a few Bass Ale’s, but I really don’t think a wolf can swim well enough to mate with a bottle nose.
wolphins and squabbits
Offspring between whale & dolphin, and squirrel & rabbit. Some rabbits just like a BIGGER bushy tail. They also tend to wear more bling.
I believe the whale/dolphin offspring was fertile, which caused some re-examination of the seperation of the species (by defiition, they should not be a seperate species if they are able (and do) produce fertile offspring.
Sir mix-a-lot like a bigger tail with more bling too.
As for the whale dolphin thing, shouldn’t it be a whalphin? Which type of whale and which dolphin were, you know, gettin’ it on?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolphin
Here you go. It is a WOLPHIN. Bottlenose dolphin & False Killer Whale. Wolphin is intermediatee between the two (Edit: and fertile).
Bottlenose Dolphin (background/tan), false killer whale (middle), wolphin/hybrid (foreground).
A False Killer Whale is a dolphin, not a whale, so it’s not as crazy as it sounds (but it’s still not ‘supposed’ to happen)