Hybrid Animals

Hi Adrian,

The kind of genetic manipulation you are referring to is still a little unlikely (and very expensive!) for use in wildlife conservation.
In all honesty I can’t think of a species that could be recovered from hybrids (unless you are thinking about undoing “genetic pollution” in species which have bred with their domesticated counterparts?)

I am very confident that conservation will be successful on the genetics level in years to come as techniques become more established and the costs involved decrease.

 

A little off the subject, but what about the 'bred-back' Aurochsen [Heck Cattle to the politically correct] & Tarpan, re-created by selectively breeding from domestic cattle & horses after the wild ancestors had gone extinct. Not perfect replicas maybe, but pretty impressive. I have a fantasy of phasing out domestic cattle in the New Forest to replace with Heck Cattle; they could still produce an annual meat crop and would be a step towards rewilding.

 

I think there is a project going on to bring Quaggas back, through use of one of the Plain's zebra species (Burchelli?).

 

@ Javan Rhino - Yes I herd of that. Some people are very uncertain it will work being that even if you recreate a species it still won't be the same species as it used to.

 

Ahh cool, thanks for the confirmation. I know very little about it, but I have been shown a picture of the 'closest' they have got to a Quagga baby being born. I'll try and find the pic and upload it

Edit: It was actually easy enough to find the info. http://www.quaggaproject.org/ - there is a picture on here of 'Henry, the first quagga-like foal, born 20th Jabuary 2005).

 

Its not technically a subject for a 'Hybrid Animals' thread but while on the subject, the Quagga Project have produced more foals that they call 'Quagga -like' since2005- these have increasingly less and less stripes on their legs and hindquarters.

They have a very complicated scoring system for the striping reduction. I am however rather sceptical that they will produce anything resembling a true Quagga- the ground colour in these recreated animals is all wrong (cream not brown) and shows little sign of improvement through the generations. The Quagga had its own very distinct striping pattern/colour which I fear is lost forever now.

 

I'll bow to your obviously superior knowldege on the area but would make the point that I was trying to refute the link provided by Arizona Docent which suggested that basically the white mutation arose because it conferred advantage to Tigers in snowy areas by using the same logic used in the original link (basically trying to make the point that the concept doesn't stand up to its own logic).

As above, I used this assumption, made in the original link to suggest that the basic logic of the concept doesn't stand up.

 

Siberian Tigers are not considered to be the basal population. Its believed the Tiger originated in either South East Asia (or was it China?) and then radiated out into the other parts of its range from there.

 

I'm not sure on this so don't quote me on it, but I think I heard somewhere that, ironically, South China tigers (P. tigris amoyensis) was the founding ssp. But like I say, I could be wrong.

 

Not exactly what you are talking about, but re-creating a dinosaur type creature is actually a real possibility. Apparently animals carry a lot of 'junk' dna: genes from earlier stages of evolution which is switched off and inactive. In the case of birds, they still carry dna from the raptor type dinosaurs they evolved from.

Scientists can actually 'switch on' some of these genes, and have (separately) created chicken embroyos with teeth and tails, though I believe they didn't take them to hatching.

This was shown on a tv program I saw: sorry, can't remember details, but they showed the embroyos.

Of course a creature created in this way would be a jigsaw of available genes, and there'd be no way of knowing how 'authentic' it was, and it wouldn't be a particular dinosaur species.

Breeding from hybrids to an original is certainly theoretically possible, if all the genes are there. Personally I wonder if in some cases, where the genetic pool of a species or subspecies is limited, if hybrids might be a source of original genes and genetic diversity which might otherwise be lost. In such a case it might be better to breed animals with some of the 'wrong' genetics than maintain a very limited, inbred group of 'pure' animals.

 

I just stumbled across this episode featuring Pizzly bears, apologies if it's been posted already

BBC iPlayer - David Attenboroughs Natural Curiosities - Series 4: 1. Animal Frankensteins

 

My local zoo has a smal group of offspring of Pied avocet/Black-winged stilt hybrids. A male Black-winged stilt liked the Pied avocet to much. And was removed the same year. They live together with the nothern bald ibises

 

Neat. It's interesting how many accidental hybrids zoos can make. Although I don't support active breeding of hybrids, I can't deny that they are interesting to look at and any zoo worth their salt likely isn't going to be deliberately making tigons and wholphins, so I honestly don't mind them as long as they're being created by accident.

 

It’s not recommended to keep avocets and stilts together, for this reason

 

They still keep them together, with no further problems since then