Interspecies hybrids: natural & artificial

[GuateGojira]

Mmmmmm, very interesting topic. I will put some data on cats, Brotherbear put some data on bears already in the topic of "King of bears". There is said that polar and brown bears separated since only about <500,000 years ago, and they are already a different species now. In fact, the author states that the separation could be much earlier, about 300,000 years ago, showing that genetically, species don't need too much time to be separated. This can be applied with the cave lion (Panthera spelaea), which based on DNA and fossils, separated from the modern lion and the leopard about 700,000 to 600,000 years ago (depending of the source), this is much earlier than the leopard itself! However, for the tiger, although Mazák & Groves (2006) found evidence that the Island tigers are a different species from the mainland population, the separation time (about 75,000 years, since the Toba eruption), is too few, from my point of view, but I will go deeper here in my next post.

I will focus on tigers-lions-leopards, in order to see they genetic variation. It is also interesting to see that pumas and leopards can mate and produce litters, even when we know the fact that they are two completely different species of cats, from to different clades. [img]images/smilies/tongue.gif[/img]
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