Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Chimparilla, anyone?
By now, you’ve heard of catdog.
No, not that catdog. This one:
Owner Cassia Aparecida de Souza says her moggie Mimi got pregnant after mating with a neighbour’s dog.
Cassia, 18, says Mimi had a litter of six babies — three cat-like and the rest looking like dogs.
The cat creatures died after the birth in Passo Fundo, Brazil, but the doggies survived. Geneticists are testing blood samples. Unlikely hybrids have happened before but always between closely related species.
Yes, like horses (chromosome number 64) and donkeys (chromosome number 62), or lions (38) and tigers (38). Hybrids are possible between closely related species — here is a cool list of documented hybrids at Wikipedia. My favorite: the wolphin, a cross between a bottlenose dolphin and a false killer whale. Here’s a top ten hybrid list, with cool pictures.
My son and I are fans of Impossible Creatures, a computer game in which you create all manner of funky hybrids and put them into combat with other funky hybrids. The year is 1937 and you play Rex Chance, scientist/adventurer a la Indiana Jones. Rex, along with the beautiful Lucy, face off against eeevil entrepreneur Upton Julius on one island setting after another.
Yes, you can make catdogs in Impossible Creatures, provided your dog is a wolf, your cat, a tiger. Eh. Close enough.
But, back to real life hybrids. If hybrid success depends on a close genetic relationship and similar chromosome number, why not a chimparilla (chimps, N = 48, gorillas, N = 48), or, for that matter, hybrids with humans (N = 46)? Oliver aside, there have been no documented chumans. (Humpanzees?) Nor can I find any humarillas.
If you search the web for the answer to the ape/human breeding question, the most common comment is, “Could never happen, they have different chromosome numbers.” But the horse/donkey hybrid, AKA mule, gives the lie to that argument.
Back to catdog. Cats and dogs aren’t closely related; the lines diverged about 50 million years ago. And their chromosome numbers aren’t remotely similar (cats, N = 38; dogs, N = 78).
Sorry, catdog aficionados; this puppy ain’t gonna fly. Or meow.
D.
When I was a a teenager, we had one wolf-husky cross living next door to us and another right across the street. Blue, next door, was quite dog-like, while Wolf, across the way, was very wolfy.
Awesome links. Very relevant to a story concept I’ve been developing.
Thanks!
M
That’s just sad. I love animals and hate to see them suffer and die. Did you see the pictures of the poor cyclops kitty a few months ago?
Wolfy, eh? Scary! I don’t like what I’ve heard about those hybrids.
Glad to help, Michelle. Synchronicity.
Lesia, yeah, I saw those photos. The media loves freak shows, don’t they?
Very cool. I’d seen ligers and some of the other hybrids beforebefore, but that leopon is my new obsession.
Here, kitty, kitty…
Wolf was a nice enough beast, although I don’t think I’d have trusted him around cats or other small animals. And Blue was awesome – an enormous animal, very bright, sociable, inquisitive, very protective of all the houses on his street (he ran down a burglar in their backyard once, and held him – stood on him, actually – for over an hour until the family came home). He fought with other dogs, but that’s true of most unneutered males, wolf or not.