Interspecies hybrids: natural & artificial

[BorneanTiger]

Even the Cat Specialist Group, which mostly liked to argue in 2017 that the tiger is divided into only 2 subspecies, the Mainland Asian Panthera tigris tigris and Sunda Islands' Panthera tigris sondaica (pages 66–68 (https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y), except that 2 CSG members later rebelled against this decision by contributing to a study in 2018 which insisted that even mainland Asian populations such as Bengal and Siberian tigers are genetically different enough to be treated as different subspecies: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/ful...all%3Dtrue), admitted the possibility of hybridisationof the Northern and Southern lion subspecies, which they referred to as Panthera leo leo and Panthera leo melanochaita respectively, in the Northeast African country of Ethiopia in page 72 (https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y), more details here (https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-north-e...ican-lions): 

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Even if the case is that both subspecies are simply present in Northeast Africa, without mating with each other to produce hybrid lions, the trouble is that one definition of subspecies is that two populations within the same species are supposed to be both genetically and geographically distinct (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subspecies), as I mentioned here (https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-on-the-...s?page=151), but that's not the case for Northern and Southern lions in Northeast Africa, at least, with the ranges of the 2 genetic groups nearly overlapping in northeastern D. R. Congo in Central Africa: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep3080..._evolution

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A Northeast African lion in Bale Mountains National Park, Ethiopia: https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/an...video.aspx

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A Central African lion in Virunga National Park, northeastern D. R. Congo, adjacent to Queen Elizabeth National Park in the East African country of Uganda: https://savevirunga.com/2012/07/02/1-000...irunga-10/

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Abyssinian lion at New York Zoological Gardens, 1914: https://archive.org/stream/annualreportn...6/mode/1up

Northern subspecies (Panthera leo leo),
Southern subspecies (Panthera leo melanochaita), or
hybrid (Panthera leo leo × Panthera leo melanochaita)?

*This image is copyright of its original author

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