I don't know if anyone has ever made a thread with this exact subject, so I'm sorry if this isn't the first one. This thread isn't just about domestic species, but any species (including hybrids), breed or other specific variations of animals created or maybe even highly popularized by humans. Some random examples (but not necessarily the main ones): dingo, singing dog, koi, goldenfish, angelfishes, discusfishes, white tiger, watusi cattle, gayal, domestic water buffalo, jacob sheep, hybrids, morphs of reptiles, albinos, leucistics, melanistics... What are your opinions about them? Do you like any of these? Would you have them at your zoo? Could it be bad for the environmental education?
I was thinking about hybrids recently myself and although he wasn’t actually bred there, Phnom Tamao Zoo & Wildlife Rescue Centre holds an awesome hybrid sun bear / moon bear male - his name is Thom Thom and he is dashingly handsome!
Seriously? Then it should be named "Earth bear". I didn't even know that they could hybridize, as they aren't from the same genus and are quite different from each other.
There are a few small photos of the sun-Asiatic black bear hybrid in this scientific paper from 2008: https://www.bearbiology.com/fileadmin/tpl/Downloads/URSUS/Vol_19/Galbreath_Hunt_Clements_19_1.pdf
I’m not quite sure how to post photographs on this forum yet, but I have a good few of this lovely looking chap. Here’s one from Free The Bears: Meet Thom Thom, a sun/moon bear hybrid! Thom Thom isn’t the most sociable bear - he can be quite aggressive towards the other bears, and his favourite pastime is rubbing himself against the outside wall of the building of his night den, which has left a dark, Thom Thom shaped mark on the white wall.
Is it just me or does Thom Thom look like a tayra? And going back to the original subject, Heck horses and Heck cattle both belong in this topic. Domestic animals which were bred to look like extinct wild species and actually (purposely) bred in a zoo!
I don't think zoos should breed animals with health problems, like ligers or white tigers. Not a fan of zoos breeding wild animal hybrids either. However, I do think that some of the animals could have educational value that would justify zoo display. (even if breeding wouldn't be a good idea) You could use an albino or leucistic animal to talk about genetics, or color adaptations. When I was a kid, I saw a leucistic hawk at the Minnesota Zoo and they explained that they had to keep him at the zoo because his coloring made him unable to survive in the wild despite multiple rehab and release attempts. A hybrid could also potentially open up a discussion on genetics and hybrids. Domestic animals can be used to talk about the domestication process, (and if you want to link the subject to wildlife, explaining domestication is a good way to help people better understand evolution) especially if there is a lot of variation. Zoos could even do behavioral displays to show what makes the domestic animal different from its wild counterpart. (RAISING A WOLF IN YOUR HOUSE DOESN'T MAKE IT JUST LIKE A DOMESTIC DOG, PEOPLE) Another benefit to this is that the zoos could demonstrate why wild animals usually make bad pets, and that's a good conservation message seeing as how some wild populations of a species get decimated by the pet trade.
Talking of leucistic animals, there is Snowflake the gentoo penguin at Edinburgh Zoo, and his two leucistic daughters who were bred there (if all are still there) .
Snowflake had many offspring though not that many survived to maturity. Barcelona surrepticiously tried to create another 'Snowflake' to replace him when he died, by keeping him with one of his daughters(who carried the albino gene)for a time, though they pretended this was due to 'overcrowding'. However there was no baby from that union.
During the Nazi era, the Heck brothers attempted to back breed animals to resurrect the aurochs and the tarpan at the Munich zoo. At least one of them, who was involved in the looting of the Warsaw zoo, is a character in the recent film "The Zookeeper's Wife."
This is one of the two main reasons I stick to AZA places - you can't breed white tigers or lions. Though I've come across a couple of zoos that I think are violating that The main one I can think of is the wholphin, false killer whale x bottlenose dolphin. The first was born at SeaWorld Tokyo, and there's currently one at Sea Life Park in Hawaii.
Excuse be, but are white lions actually rare and how much? I know that white tigers are pretty common, but we haven't a lot of white lions here in Brazil (I only know one zoo with them here).
They used to be rare - I remember the cubs being born at Philly in the mid-90s when I was maybe 6 years old? I even had a vhs about them - but now they've become very popular and are, or have been, at dozens of zoos. And of course, because of their rarity in the wild, they are are very closely related. Here's the AZA white paper: https://www.speakcdn.com/assets/2332/aza_white_paper_inbreeding_for_rare_alleles_18_jan_2012.pdf
