What in the world are zonkeys, ligers, and wolphins? These unique names came from animals such as donkeys, horses, lions, tigers, dolphins, and whales. They have mated and created diversity in their kind with their offspring. These rare animals may have many advantages just as well as disadvantages. They could either thrive and become a new, unique species or they could die off because of all of their flaws. This magnificent work of nature is the effects of natural selection, mutation, and other mechanisms, which have given us more variety within a kind.
All these animals have parents that are from different species but from the same kind, or genetic group. This usually means that they have a common ancestor. Because they are the same kind, the laws of nature allowed it to mate and create a new creature. The first examples are zonkeys and zedonks. Zonkeys were created when a male zebra and a female donkey were crossed. Zedonks, on the other hand, were created when a male donkey and a female zebra were crossed. Next, there are ligors and tigons. Ligors were created when a male lion and a female tiger were crossed. Tigons were created when a male tiger and a female lion were crossed. There are also blynxes and lynxcats (crosses between bobcats and lynxes), as well as a cross between a cougar and the ocelot. Last but not least, there are wolphins. These animals were created when a false killer whale and bottlenose dolphin were crossed. All of these remarkable creatures have a phenotype, a physical appearance, showing traits from both of their parents.
Zonkeys and zedonks tend to look more like a donkey, usually having tan fur, but they have stripes on their fur, coming from the zebra parent. These stripes are most obvious on the...
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...res. They are results of crosses between zebras, donkeys, horses, dolphins, killer whales, lions, tigers, and other animals. They have similar features to their parents, and because they receive both traits from the mother and the father, they become a creature with very favorable traits, and possibly one of the greatest species of their kind. Sadly, these animals will not be able to thrive, because of three main factors. One, most of them will not be able to survive because their parents are either too far apart genetically, or, they have a different number of chromosomes. Two, their parents will be their competition. Because of this, they will be outnumbered and will not be able to thrive like they should. Lastly, they are not able to reproduce and continue to grow into a species. Sadly, these magnificent creatures will never come to be a reality in the world.
1These two populations are different species because they have different capabilities of performing in nature. For example there is behavioral isolation. My evidence for that is that in the data, it states that the average time spent in courtship display for the St. Kitts rodent is 12.6 seconds. While the courtship display for the Nevis Rodent is 21.3. You can see that there is a major difference in the way that they behave. Also there is another type of isolation which is gametic isolation. There is gametic isolation because the average gestation time for St. Kitts rodent is 29.3 days. The average gestation for the Nevis rodent is 42.7 days. Therefore a sperm from St. Kitts rodent wouldn’t survive in the reproductive tract of the Nevis rodent. It wouldn’t survive because it wouldn’t develop properly and is not accustomed to its environment. There is also another type of isolation happening with the rodents of St. Kitts. This type of isolation is called temporal isolation. There is temporal isolation because the article states, “the reproductive seasons are being delayed by up to one year.” This is talking about that the rodents are having a hard time finding mates therefore, their reproductive season is being delayed. Also in the article it states, “In the 240 attempts to bring a Nevis animal into the St. Kitts population, you are unable to observe a single successful reproductive event.” The rodents are mechanically isolated, because if you can’t have a reproductive event, there reproductive organs might not be matching with one another. Their appearance might look identical but they are genetically different.
Humans have driven many animals extinct, but should we bring them back is the question. Geneticists, biologists, conservationists and ethicists gathered to discuss the controversies. Some people say in doing this we are playing God, while others say we did by killing them. Other scientist say that it may be beneficial because it will add biodiversity, and medicinal properties back to the ecosystem. It is only possible to bring species back from around 10 thousand years ago. Recently scientists have vastly improved the cloning process. We can now coax adult animal cells into any type of cell, including eggs and sperm, then manipulating them into full-fledged embryos, which has led to the ideas and developments of reviving many other species including mammoths, frogs and
...however, with further research, it came to light that this was not just a “unique species” but an entire phyla that was new to science (Adler 2013). Why a new phyla? “What made the creatures seem new is they have no living descendants. They represent entire lineages, major branches on the tree of life, left behind by evolution…” (Adler 2013). While other lineages did survive-actually a collateral predecessor of the vertebrates, and that means us! (Adler 2013).
One should not think that because zebrafish (Danio rerio) are fishes that they are in some ways less than any mammalian species. They certainly are not. Zebrafish are small shoaling cyprinids, named after the prominent black and white stripes patterns of the adults. Native to the Indian subcontinent, those laterally compressed organisms are widely distributed in slow moving streams and stagnant habitats. Where existent, zebrafish are typically the most abundant species (McClure, et al., 2006, p. 562). They also have a short generation time which allows large numbers to hatch in a short period of time. The species has become popular among enthusiasts due to its hardiness, cold resistance, and facility of breeding. Over the years, selective breeding have created numerous different strands.
Yet unexplained, however, are the stark physical and behavioral differences between dogs and their ancestor. If dogs are such a slight variation on the grey wolf, then why do they look so diversely alien to it when compared with wolves of entirely different species? One reasonable explanation for this dissonance that springs to mind is that dogs must still be more dissimilar to each other in genes that express physicality and demeanor than ...
As the human population of the world continues to increase the flora and fauna of the planet are becoming an increasingly smaller part of the picture. Environmentalist and conservationists all over the globe are working hard to find strategies and methods for the preservation of disappearing creatures and species. An increasingly popular idea that would allow for great benefits in the field of conservation became apparent in 1996 with the cloning of sheep by the name of Dolly. Since then the scientific debate on the relationship between cloning and conservation has ensued. Although the answer to that question remains on the horizon, cloning for helping endangered species is a process that may become a frequent procedure in the future.
comes from and how they evolved in the manner that they did. This type of
The video “Dogs and More Dogs” presents one of the most perplexing questions in evolutionary biology: how did the diversity of dogs evolve from a relatively homogeneous population of wolves. Anthropological data suggests that dogs came into existence some fifteen thousand years ago. In terms of the history of earth and the majority of the organisms that inhibit it, dogs are still very young. It is thus very remarkable that one species (wolves), which must have looked somewhat alike, could have given rise to the huge differences we see between the Chihuahua and the Golden Retriever.
When I inquired about what made these particular animals so "unique," I thought I would go right to the closest, most reliable sources that I had. I first asked my daughter, who is seven years old. Her response was that they were "cute" and that they had "cute names." When I asked my wife, she told me that they were "cute," and that they were "soft and cuddly."
The concept of transitional species is an important and complex notion in evolutionary biology. To begin with, there is no such thing as transitional species since all living things were always evolving in the past, not stopping at one stage or another, and they will continue to evolve in the future. In terms of evolutionary biology, we use the concept of transitional species as a way to dim ambiguity. Much like the use of the Linnean taxonomic system of species, we come up with concepts like transitional species to organize and classify species in order to understand their evolutionary roots and how those species changed through life’s history to become what they are today. “In the same way that the concept of species can be provisionally meaningful to describe organisms at a single point in time, the concept of transitional species can be provisionally meaningful to describe organisms over a length of time, usually quite a long time, such as hundreds of thousands or millions of years” (111). Though it can be difficult to distinguish what can be considered an ancestral species from another, the fossil record can show us how species change through time as they develop ways to adapt to stresses found in their environments. “In the modern sense, organisms or fossils that show intermediate stages between ancestral and that of the current state are referred to as transitional species” (222). The concept of transitional species is, in essence, fairly straight forward. This paper will outline the concept of transitional (or sometimes termed intermediate) species and the latter’s role in evolutionary biology, as well as go in depth about several common transitional species: Tiktaalik, an animal at the cusp between life in the water and ...
The idea of animal and human hybrids has referenced in various folklore and sci-fi fantasies. However, the animal and human hybrids has become a reality. Human and animal experiments have been produced since the 2000s.The human and animals hybrids are called chimeras, a beast from Greek mythology,in which it had a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a snake’s tail. The research of chimeras has opened a new doorway into medical research, a doorway into the unknown, and provided new information about the human genome.
Mott, Maryann. "Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy." Daily Nature and Science News and Headlines | National Geographic News. 25 Jan. 2005. Web. 05 Apr. 2011. .
varies from dark gray to gray with cinnamon, buff, tan, and black often have reddish
Whales are believed to have come from land ancestors. The traditional theory of Cetacean evolution was that whales were related to Mesonychids, and extinct order of carnivorous animals (hoofed animals), which resembled wolves with hooves and sister group of the artiodactyls (even-toed animals). These animals had unusual triangular teeth similar to those of whales. This is why scientists long believed that whales evolved from a form of Mesonychid. More recent molecular phylogeny data suggest that whales are more closely related to the artiodactyls, specifically the hippopotamus. The strong evidence for a clade combining cetaceans and artiodactyls is further discussed in the article “Cetartiodactyla”. However, the anthracothere ancestors of hippos do not appear in the fossil record until millions of years after Pakicetus, the first known whale ancestor(Strauss, no date).
...curred during January 2000. An animal species known as the Pyrenean Ibex was confirmed to be extinct however scientists have attempted to clone DNA from the remaining females before the species went extinct. This led to a problem if the scientists successfully created the ibex: the species will continue to be extinct do to the lack of a cloned male as technology was not quite advanced yet. The cloning project happened anyway and during the project, only one ibex managed to be born alive, however it died 7 minutes later after birth due to severe lung problems due to having its cells combined with goats to preserve the specimen.