A hybrid animal is the offspring resulting from combining the qualities of two organisms of different varieties, species or genera through sexual reproduction). When two animals of different species mate, their offspring contain 50% of genes from each parent species. Hybrids can be created by humans, such as the mule, which is a cross between a donkey and a horse). However, hybrids can also occur naturally in the wild, such as the liger, which is a cross between a lion and a tiger.
Hybrids can have a variety of outcomes, and sometimes the hybrid is weaker than the parents, or doesn’t even survive. Sometimes it’s stronger, and sometimes it behaves more like one parent species than the other. Many hybrid animals are sterile, meaning they may be able to mate, but they won’t create offspring. However, some hybrids are fertile, which challenges some of our basic scientific ideas about what a species is.
There are many examples of hybrid animals, both natural and human-made. Some examples of hybrid animals include the mule, the liger, and the wholphin, which is a cross between a common bottlenose dolphin and a false killer whale. Other examples of hybrid animals include the zorse (a cross between a zebra and a horse), the cama (a cross between a camel and a llama), and the grolar bear (a cross between a grizzly bear and a polar bear) .
