Hybrid Hijinks!

the nar luga and Pisley. Discover this more as we answer the angel question, how comes scientists try to make it? Jesus Fish. Joining me today to hybridize our thoughts is my producer Joel Monique and writer viral hashtag creators such as hashtag what black Panther means to Me, pr professional writer for a v club, THHR and comics Beat Calea Maria. Welcome, Kayla, Hi,

thank you for having me. So. I'm really excited about this episode because hybrids are It's a real mind bender type situation when you think about, oh, right, different animals can create offspring. Sometimes it's a mistake of nature. It's one of those things where you kind of go back to that Dwight saying of where he's you know, I've walked in on animals of all types. You know, a couple of pigs on a chicken and things like that. You're like, oh, that's weird, but it's like, we could

definitely happen. Well, I don't think pigs in a chicken could happen, but you know, different types, so I think, yes, yeah, Well, my first exposure to hybrids was I think Napoleon Dynamite the movie and he was drawing a liger and talking about how this was a cross between a tiger and a lion, and I thought it was just funny movie stuff. But I looked it up and it's real. So that was that kind of blew my mind. It seems like a real oopsie goofer on the part of Mother Nature

to have that happen, but it does occasionally happen. So a hybrid is when two species of animals are able to reproduce, creating an offspring that spits in the eye of God just kidding. So the species have to be similar enough genetically for it to work, such as a horse and a donkey. You can't breed a turtle with a giraffe, no matter how awesome. That is sounding now as I'm visualizing it. Where would all the neck go though, like one of those retractable measuring tapes, I guess, into

the into the turtle shell. I'm picturing a really giant turtle shell that like acts as a turtleneck around you know, all of it together. That's so much extrovertebrate. Like, there's no like, would it be like an authoritian thing? Right? I do like that, and then it makes like sounds like that. I'm into that. It's really genetically impossible for that to happen, but sometimes there are surprising hybrids that happen on accidents. So I want to talk first about

some animal news. Later in the show, I'm going to get into the nitty gritty on how hybrids work, and we'll have to talk about how generally reproduction works. So you know, I'm gonna give you guys the birds and the bees talk. But first I want to talk about the inspiration for this week's episode, which is this absolutely book wild news story about the sturtle fish. Yes, scientists accidentally, which is the best kind of science, created the sturtle fish.

So I have shared with you guys a picture of the sturtle fish. I just want you to take just really absorb that. Take that in fish with a nose. Yeah, If I'm quite honest, it looks like something that has been created on deviant part before questions. Mm hmmmmmmm. It's kind of It's like a Pinocchio fish type of situation. It's got a pretty doofy looking mouth. It looks a little bit like a Mr. Burns fish from The Simpsons. This fish is holding its little fence together, going excellent.

You know, I have so many questions. I'm gonna let that happen. I get I'm going to guess that one of your questions is how did this happen? And who allowed it to happen. So this is a hybrid of the American paddlefish and a Russian sturgeon. So it's kind of like a Cold War spy thriller romance situation going okay to a sexy Russian sturgeon stealing the heart of an American paddlefish. But is the sturgeon really a spy?

A spurgeon? No, that's not all right. Moving on, So an American paddlefish is it's self quite an interesting looking animal. I've shown you a picture of a man proudly holding a paddlefish. It its body looks sort of like any old fish, kind of like a tuna or something. But then it's snout is very long like a paddle thus its name a paddlefish. Is this cousins with a swordfish? It's it's I don't think it's direct cousins with the swordfish, but it's probably not. I mean they're both rafe and fish.

It's probably not like super super far away from the swordfish. But no, I don't think they are cousins necessarily. Um And the Russian sturgeon looks quite a bit different. It's kind of a bit of a I don't know how, like a little more catfish looking. It's got sort of a flat bottom. It's got a spiky back. It is a bottom feeder, and it, yeah, it looks it looks like a well, I'm gonna say it looks like a placostumus a little bit, knowing full well most people don't

know what a pocostumus looks. That's not helped I got this, Katie. Okay, imagine a catfish with a mohawk. But then what is like the If you've ever seen the device, your dad uses to trim the hedge. Is it's like long with a lot of readers on it that's on the bottom of the fish, and it's got like little whiskers up front and like kind of like um, a mongoose snow on it. It's very strange to look at, and when it's like all shiny and black, it's like even weirder.

So wait, it's d also a sturgeon because that kind of looks like, Okay, it's got such a long snow so you're looking at yeah, you're looking at a diagram. Here on the we have these fish helpfully labeled A, B, C, and D, and it kind of looks a bit like an animorph's but really what it is is that, uh, these are pictures taken by these scientists that accidentally created the sturtlefish. Fish. A is just a Russian sturgeon and

fish D is an American paddlefish. And the fish in the middle are the happy little accident that happens when you accidentally cross the sturgeon with the paddlefish. Sea is Cinderella and B is the ugly stepsister. What is like smooth and sleek and kind of like dolphin, like almost the other one is like clearly the rebel of the family with the sea mohawk previously mentioned and like more of a shirk looked to it on the back. Y. Yeah, so you can see that there are different iterations of

these hybrids. You have quite a big genetic salad to choose from as these hybrids, and there are different flavors of these hybrids. So the story of how this happened is, I guess a meat cute kind of thing for fish or something. So aquatic ecologists at the Research Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture and Hungary we're trying to see if they could get the sturgeon to reproduce via ginno genesis.

So ginda genesis is actually a form of ace actual reproduction where an egg is triggered to create a clone of itself by the presence of sperm, but without the genetic contribution of the sperm. So basically you have the female egg and the male sperm, and the male sperm comes up and tries to fertilize the egg, and the egg is like cool, I'm gonna make a baby now see you later, get the hell out of here, and this sperm just dissolves into nothingness and doesn't actually contribute

anything genetically to the offspring. And it may be surprising, but fish can reproduce a sexually, as can reptiles and amphibians, and gyno genesis is just one form of a sexual reproduction that does require the presence of sperm, but again

it is there's no gene contribution from the sperm. So they were trying to get this to hap in in sturgeons by introducing what they thought would be incompatible sperm of the paddlefish, because they thought very reasonably that these extremely different fish would be too different to fall in love and create, not would be too different to be able to sexually reproduce. So for so you understand the relationship between these fish. Sturgeons and paddlefish are in the

same order of animals, so they're somewhat related. But when you think about it, humans are in the order primates. So like, be like assuming that we could mate with a lemur, which you know now that i'm thinking about it, though, you could. Having those stripes, just natural, bold, beautiful stripes would be great, and being able to jump around, I'm into it. The legs incredible, Like everyone now has supermodel lemur length, yes, but you also have arms, which means

short people were reaching the tops of cabinets. It's really a level of as as a as a proud five five I would yeah. And you know I when I was a kid, I took ballet and I was a big animal nerd, so of course obviously most popular kid in school. But I found out that Lemur's move by doing the sachet from side to side, they do the the side jumping and which is also a ballet move. Now I'm a bad ballet student, so I don't exactly remember what the move was called. But I Kayla, do

you know, Kayla, did you do ballet too? Did? Wow? Most popular girl in school. I was a dance and theater so you and me bo, it's so popular. Okay, So described the move again, so that the way Lemur's move is a it's like a side to side jump, sort of like a sachet. Is it just called the sachet? Yeah? Okay, it is called the sachet? So they do the sachet move. And I was watching Animal Planet, as popular girls do, and uh it was talking about how this was an

energy efficient move for the Lemurs. So guess what I started to do all the time sashet like a lemur around because hey, if it's good enough for lemurs, it's good enough for me, Katie Golden. If you're a kid of the nineties, you have Zaboomafoo and you fell in love with Yes, Yes, me and Zaboomafoo, we go way back. Yeah, I just you know, I think that he just gave us a really great appeal that we definitely gravitated. Yes, yeah he was. He was iconic. A heart throb. My

preteen heart throb was zaboom Buffoo. So anyways, back on topic, So sturgeons and paddlefish are in the same order, like we're in the same order of primates. So again, it would be like assuming a human and zooboom Baffoo could create some kind of offspring um, which obviously doesn't happen except for on daving arts. So sturgeons and paddlefish diverged over a hundred and eighty four million years ago and

have been living apart ever since. So the fact that all it took was some kinky Hungarian scientists to match make for them to to successfully reproduce hybrid hybrids is really mind blowing. So sturgeons and paddlefish not only look very unlike each other, they also have different behaviors. Sturgeons are bottom feeders and eat small crustaceans, whereas paddlefish filter

fleet filter feed plankton. So again, couldn't be more different, but just genetically similar enough that somehow this unholy union created offspring. So when the researchers introduced the paddlefish sperm to the sturgeons, they reproduced sexually not a sexually like the scientists had thought would happen, and combined the paddlefish and sturgeon formed the sturtle fish, which is a name that when you look at a sturtle fish, and I hope you do, and I'll include a link so you can,

it does encapsulate it. Don't you think it's an appropriate name? Absolutely? Because it's kind of nerdy, but also like in a way where nerdy sort of becomes cool and you're like, what is this original looking creature that I see before me? It is tubs are but kind of weird. I love him. He's you know, it's got a lot of I think that's that's one thing you don't really get with a lot of fish, especially um, you know, sturgeons. It's personality. Yeah,

turtlefish definitely has personality. Are you saying that this is the miscongeniality of surgeons? Oh yeah, maybe. I think it's a confident nose too. I sincerely love a confident nose. Does that make sense? It does? Yeah, just a knows that to me is I'm I'm so confident. This is the centerpiece, the centerfold of my face, and I love it. It's a very sirrido. Yes that I always thought sir no was the hot one, even the even the Steve

Martin version. So not only did the hybrid successfully hatch, which is quite an accomplishment for a hybridized animal, but they also had a fairly good survival rate, with over a hundred of them still alive. So often hybrids can be fertilized or even born, but then they're either still born or they're unable to survive doing due to massive

genetic issues. And what's interesting is beyond just sort of the physical characteristics being a combination where they get the paddle fishes nose and they get the sturgeon fishes overall body,

they also seem to have a combination of behavior. So they got a carnivorous bottom feeding behavior from their mothers and this long nose from their fathers, and so it's it's just really interesting that it's it at Hybrids sometimes times act in the way that they would in a kid's cartoon, like in dragon Ball or something where two characters form a fusion and it's a fusion of their personality, and look, since in nature often works somewhat similarly, it's

really interesting. It's it's very much so even hybrid as as humans like the features that we get in the traits and the genes that we get to carry on from my mothers and fathers, even the things that we don't want. So this poor turtle fish probably did not want to be partner verse. It probably wanted to be a vegan. And how are they survived? What's their like survivalry? Are they being released into the wild or they're just in this little farm? Yeah, no, they're not being released

into the wild. That would be not good. You don't really want to create a hybrid and then release it into the wild, not only because probably they wouldn't survive in the wild and it wouldn't be very nice to the hybrids themselves, but also if they did were successful, then that would be damaging to the animals already living in that environment. So actually they are keeping them alive because they don't want to just euthanize all of them.

So they say they're going to take care of them right now, like until I guess for the rest of their lives. Just keep them and take care of them. But they don't plan on making more of these hybrids because there's not really a scientific reason to do that other than them being adorable, sweet little babies who I want to have. And name all of them, and they would have names like like Mr Jeffers and Nosey mcnose Face and so on. Yeah, he started naming them, and

I was like, I wonder how they taste. Okay, I questions, Look, when Mr Jeffers passes away, if he writes in his fish will that he wants me to eat him, I will honor it here for it. So interestingly, some of the hybrids doubled up on their mother's DNA, so they have two sets of their mom's chromosomes and only one set of their dad's, and others have half mom and half dad, which is typically the case for sexual reproduction. It's the case for humans. So yeah, it gets it

gets pretty interesting. The way that hybrids work and genetics is it's something that is very complicated once you really start to get into the weeds on it and the way that these things interact. It's not exactly like just throwing two sets of ingredients in together and stirring them around, but it's a little bit like that, which makes it confusing. So the fact that they're able to breed means that genetically they may not be as different as biolet biologists

had previously assumed. So either they are closer on the evolutionary tree than biologists had thought, or they aren't but they just didn't their genes didn't change that much, or are just similar enough that they can create these hybrids. So yeah, I just love that these scientists were not trying to create a hybrid like in so many science fiction horror movies and oopseeed ditters. We made one and

we called it the sturtlefish. It's just fitting, like because when you see a cuttlefish in real life, that's not something I want to cuddle, but not only speak for yourself. It looks spiny and uncomfortably cuttlefish. What they're not. Most of them aren't spiny I mean not, am I thinking of the wrong fish? Let me cuddle fish are a type of seff I'm not it looks like kafulu. I'm not cuddling that well. That makes fun of us. Yeah, yeah,

you know. I mean look if casoolah did, if Casoola does rise from the depths, and I've been the one cuddling all his children, we know where that's gonna put me. Very fair. The sturtle fish is not the only accidental hybrid too have flopped into existence. Here are a few other hybrids humans have just stumbled their way into creating through science, gardening or farming. Purple tomatoes, grapefruit which is a cross between an orange and pomelo, killer bees and

super toothnecked fungus beetles. That's just a few examples, but there are all sorts of hybrid mishaps that happen. So how do they happen? When we return, we'll get cellular to talk about how hybrids happen and how sex works. That's right, folks, We're going to see some hot mitosis and myosis action. Ah yeah, So we've talked about how scientists can accidentally create a fun new hybrid, and I think I want to get into detail a little bit about how hybrids work, and we'll have to talk a

little bit about generally how reproduction works. So you know, I'm gonna sit down with you, maybe sit backwards in a chair, actually cool, like a cool youth counselor, and be like, hey, hey, let's talk. Look, there's nothing gross about life, kids, There's nothing gross about the creation of new life. All right, let's all be let's all be adults about this. Okay, can we do that like the kitla? And I clearly cannot. Every time I say sperm, someone's

just gonna giggle a little bit. Okay, alright, settle down. So hybrids can potentially result from anything that can sexually reproduce, so that includes plants and animals. It typically happens with organisms that are pretty close on the evolutionary tree. So when we look at taxonomy, so that is kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, species. You can remember this with King Philip came over for good soup. Of course, the alternative version is naughty and

I dare not repeat eat it. But hybrids really only happen on the more specific branches such as order, family, genus species, So to kind of put this in perspective. You know, a plant and a human aren't going to hybridize, sorry, poison ivy fans. A a cat and a cow aren't going to hybridize. You have to be close enough that your genes at least somewhat makes sense. The user manual for each animal has to be in the same basic language. It has to somewhat fit together. So what's interesting, though,

is it isn't. There can be some degrees of separation that are surprising, but most often we have interspecific hybrids. So that's when two species such as a horse and a zebra within the same genus mate, So this is typically how most hybrids happen. So you know, horse and zebra, horse and donkey, zebra and donkey. I'm really stuck on the donkeys. The donkeys. Yeah, but you know, a horse and a donkey create a mule, a horse and a zebra create a source. A zebra and a donkey create

a zonkey. But they're all they're all equines, so somewhat makes sense. But intergeneric hybrids happen when animals from two different genuses, such as sheep and goats, make creating a hybrid so this is much more rare, and often these hybrids don't survive. And then even more rare are interfamilial hybrids.

So interfamilial hybrids happen when animals from two different families such as chickens and pheasants, or as we just talked about, sturgeons and paddlefish reproduce, and it is very very rare. That's why that new story we talked about is such a big deal. This hardly ever happens. And finally, what is practically unheard of but technically possible is interordinal hybrids. And this is usually like only in lab experiments that

you can even begin to get this to happen. So this is I think some mad scientists created a sand dollar sea urchin hybrid, and they are from different orders, the hybrids not, it's different because they have a weird way of reproducing. They have this larval stage that is all wonky. So I'm not I'm not going to get into too much detail, suffice it to say it was an extremely strange experiment and there's not really spiky sand

dollars walking around the ocean floor. This is a very rare event that's usually just just in a lab on a on a hill amidst thunderclaps and lightning and mad cackling. So the reason it's hard to have genetically dissimilar animals create hybrids hybrids, and the reason that these hybrids are often sterile has to do with how sexual reproduction works. So here we go, everybody, everybody, just be adults about it. No giggling. Nothing about this is funny. Sperm isn't funny.

It's very serious. So some maturity, please remember that. I love that when when I when we would have a teacher that would say, children, please be mature, mature England accent. Yes. Yes, So when a sperm meets an egg and reproduces sexually, this is what happens typically. So the game meats, which are the sperm and the egg, each have one set

of chromosomes. So in humans, this may be kind of reiterating stuff you guys learned in biology class, but humans typically have twenty three chromosomes in the sperm cell and twenty three chromosomes in the egg cell. And then when they fuse, they create a single cell called a zygoat, which has forty six chromosomes. Then this zygoat must divide to create a more complex organism, and it does so

through mitosis. And I feel like a bunch of people are getting flashbacks to school and feeling really uncomfortable and sweating sweaty. But let me reassure you this is actually pretty simple when you take away all the diagrams and and so on and models. Remember having to make cell models out of styrofoam and jelly beans have so much fun. I really like whenever I made a project and involve some kind of candy, even though it was like stale and covered in glue, I would still eat it once.

That's like my claim to fame that I've been all the time would be like, yes, so I did a animal cell and a plant cell using candy air heads and the like yes, yes, did you eat them? Um? I did not. My mom had this crazy idea that instead of glue you could use toothpaste, and I was like, okay, that ruins it, Like, no, cleaning my teeth while eating candy. What kind of insanity? I know that I had to make two two trips to the store because I used I want to say I used. I used the sour straws.

Oh nice, those are great? Um, what is it? The indo, kayla, come on the goldchee bodies. So like, I wrapped it and I did the whole thing, and but I failed because I used strawberry, which is my favorite, and I kept eating it while putting the project together. So um, you know, oh that sounds great. I would have been eating that though after even with the toothpaste. I had no shame when it came to candy. So so imagine

your animal cell that you made out of candy. When you have that single cells, I go, it's gotta duplicate a bunch of times before it becomes anything more complex

than a single cell. So in order to do this, it duplicates all of its DNA and then the whole mitosis charts happen where you see these lines and stuff, and really all that's happening is the DNA lines up so that when you split the cell down the middle, it has two copies of the exact same DNA, so it it doubles it's d NA, splits it in half so that both cells are now they like two of the same cell as it began with. So it'd be like it's sort of I guess it'd be like if

you now that's weird. I was gonna say it'd be like if you cloned yourself by growing all of your body twice, all of your body parts and then lined up so that when you got split down the middle, each of the new use would have everything you need. But then that horrified me a little bit. I'll leave it in though. That is the coolest sci fi movie that has yet to be made. Okay, it's like weird science meets um oh crud. What's the one from the eighties where they cut the top of the guy's head off,

not whittling it down. Really, that is, you know, entirely fair, insentirely fair. It's gonna come to the animator, Yes, thank you. Well, yes, it's like a combination of re Animator and Weird Science and I'm here for it. Yes, yes, And that's what happens every time you have a baby adorable. So for

a hybrid, this process is a little trickier. For a hybrid to be successful, first, the sperm must successfully trigger a fertilization event in the egg, creating a zygote, and a lot of hybrids don't necessarily even read that reach this stage because the sperm and the a are just

too different, they're speaking different languages. There. Then the zygo must be able to successfully duplicate, and the combined DNA from its father and mother must be legible to each other and match up enough that you create a functioning animal. So basically, it's like you have to instruction manuals from Ikea that you're cutting in half and combining. So if you get it for like, god, I can't think of good Ikea names. I'm trying to think of what my

my couch was. There's a Docta table at TORP. So far, yes, I have the act TORP, aren't you? I Like, I'm not even lie though the calics shelving units are prime good no shadea at Ikea. I have a few Ikea things in my apartment. So but yeah, I'd be like taking something for the ec TORP couch and a table and trying to combine them, and you're going to create something that doesn't function. Whereas if you took two sets of manuals for maybe a couch and then a slightly

different couch, but they're still couches. Hey, maybe you'll just create some kind of couch hybrid that has arm rests and cup holders. Who knows. So that answer is like why hybrids aren't just constantly happening. Why you can't get a turtle a wrap no matter how much I want it to happen. But why are hybrids often sterile? Like you can create this animal, then why can't that animal mate?

And that is because of the difference between mitosis, that process we just talked about where an egg is replicating itself, and the process of myosis, which is it's great when you're just missing like one letter for a very similar process. Uh cool, move scientists, But yeah, myosis is when you are actually creating gam meets. You're creating sex cells. So in myosis, you are creating new sex cells by jumbling up your DNA into non exact copies. So mitosis you're

creating exact copies of the same cell. Myosis you're creating something new by shuffling stuff around. It's like shuffling a deck of cards and now you've got a new deck of cards. So um, in mitosis, if you have two sets of chromosomes that are not from the same species and don't exactly match up, it's not necessarily death sentence like there could be. You know, it's you're you know,

basically shuffling together these two manuals. There's pretty similar. And if it isn't quite right, you could still potentially build a couch. But if your whole thing is like taking these two manuals and then shuffling them all up at random and then putting them together, I don't know what you're gonna make, but it's certainly not going to be a couch. So that is why mules cannot reproduce. Does that make sense you guys? Do you have any questions? No,

it totally makes sense. I would. It's disappointing because I think it would be cool if like we just started like quadrupling down on these animals, Like if a liger and I don't know what the cross between a panther and was a tiger or a panther and a lion, one of the truly exists. It looks epic as hell. And if it made it with the lighter, I have like a black body, but like a white mane or something with tiger stripes, and that's just so cool. I

feel like nature really cheating us on this one. I don't want to down Mother Nature, but I love that you just described an affliction shirt, thank you. Yet that's just like the image I see. It's like always these like very like overly depicted animals and like technically to end up looking like hybrids on their shirts. Um, it was just one of those things and thoughts that even more so, I think what you're describing is panthera hybrid, which again, isn't that a that's a band Panthera. Isn't

that a Panthera's like heavy metal? Oh wait, I think my boyfriend listens to that. I should know this, But yeah, Pantera hybrid is cross breed between either tigers, lions, jaguars, or leopards. And we'll actually get into that a little

more later, but yes, absolutely it is. It's it's one of those things where for the sake of the environment and in terms of animal welfare, I don't think we should be intentionally creating hybrids unless there's some really good reason to do so, like a real life Jurassic park, Like a real life Jurassic Park. That's exactly Yes, think about it. If we because we if you have the power, we could make a dragon. Like we just keep breeding animals with each other until we're like finally a dragon.

I don't think it'd be too hard because you think about it. You know, birds are dinosaurs. We've talked about this before. All we need is some dinosaur DNA of them that are the dinosaurs that are somewhat related to birds. Cross those up. You got yourself a dragon. Perfect, We have the recipe. Oh yeah, I mean I've been attacked by enough, you know, geese by walking past the lake or a pond. You know, have some sort of fear of those types of birds that can run very fast.

M m. I'm not sure I'm ready yet, but they're like, obviously there is a want out there for this. So yeah, it's people are clamoring for the goose dino hybrids, and maybe we'll make it happen. You know, it's anything can happen. If if goose I would prefer to be goose dinosaur hybrids, that happens, you know. Oh yeah, that's yeah. Let's that's technically bringing back raptors. Love it just running after you. Yeah,

give them things. Okay. Reproduction didn't used to involve sex boring, right, well, life on Earth used to reproduce a sexually, so all organisms just made copies of themselves. At some point an early prokaryotic cell, something like a bacteria probably started exchanging genes, and eventually eukaryotic cells perfected the technique by not just exchanging genes, but recombining them, shuffling the deck. This new

form of reproduction. Sexual reproduction allowed organisms to pull together their genetic resources and diversify, which gave them adaptive advantages where they didn't have to rely on only a mutation for offspring to become more genetically diverse from the parent. So, hey, parents, your kids may drive you crazy sometimes, but the fact that they're different from you means that we're not a

huge clonal species. When we return, we're going to have some fun talking about real life exam boles of some unbelievable hybrids. Alright, so now, you guys, we are onto the most fun, the funniest part of the show, where I talk about some real life hybrids that are I think a lot of people know about the ligers and the taigons and these big cat mixes, which are really cool, but I'm going to talk about a few that I think are a little less known. So first of all,

a little bit of information about hybrid naming conventions. Everybody's favorite subject on the show naming conventions, so the father species typically comes first and then the mothers because I guess feminism has not come to hybrid naming conventions and it needs to. But a liger is a lion father and a higer mother. I don't think this naming convention

is always used. I certainly have seen news articles about hybrids that don't really use this naming convention, so I wouldn't always if someone says this is a tiger on it should technically be that the tiger is the father and the lion is the Wait, yes, the tiger is the father and the lion is the mother, but sometimes it's not. I don't know, but yeah, that is that

has been traditionally the naming convention. And the reason it is actually of note which species is the father and which is the mother is that the genes attached to X or Y chromosomes do matter when you're creating a hybrid. So uh, some genes are passed down through females and some through males, so you can get some really interesting

things that happen and with hybrids. So for instance, ligers are huge, and there are a really interesting case because they get so big because usually lions get genes from females that inhibit male offspring growth, but female tigers don't do that. So if you have a male lion mate with a female tiger, you get a liger, and male ligers can grow to be huge, huge animals, much larger than a lion or a tiger could get. And they're

so pretty, they are beautiful. When we were watching Tiger King, like the rest of the world um into the liger, my husband double taked and I was like, yeah, it's real, Yeah, it's real. I think that. I think Tiger King is a great example of my my annoying moralizing though, where yes, these hybrids are really cool, but then when you realize that they are these animals that have been created just for entertainment and without much care to their health and

well being, it's yes, it's not. It's not great. So I can appreciate how how cool they are and how interesting, but when they are intentionally created just for entertainment, I think that is, you know, not good. That's back to what you said. There's no they have to stay where they are, there's no way for them to go out anywhere, and so it's not for conservation. Because you can't release them to the wild. I don't think it's for any kind of scientific research or any yeah, any ecological purpose.

It's just for entertainment. So that's you know, like I don't I think when it's charming when the sturtle fish was created because they were not trying to do that. It was a happy accident and they were being really the reason richers are being really cool about it because they're going to take care of these fish for the rest of their lives, but they aren't going to create more of them or release them into the wild or anything.

But yeah, it's it's one of those things where you know it it's a I am still very fascinated by hybrids, but it is definitely we should not be creating like, you know, oh, we can cross this animal with this and then we get like a pocket giraffe. Not that that would actually work, but if it did work, though, I wish that ethically and scientifically speaking, it were possible.

Go ahead and a shrink ray and we're just gonna just shrink a draft down and I'm just gonna keep it in myront pocket of my shirt, and we're just gonna go on adventures together. I'm gonna say. I'm gonna say, because I'm tired of being a wet blanket, I'm going to say, yes, dream your dreams, dream your giraffe dreams.

Keep that science is going to continue to try to push these types of animal creation hybrids because it does there do need to draw a crowd like any when snapchatters came out, like it was everybody had to have a picture with a tiger. If you get a liger

or some kind of hybrid like abolish status. I don't think that would be coming from scientists really because the I think with a lot of scientists who do research into animals, and I think it would be most most of them, I would assume would be more worried about what would happen when they do this, like the the implications.

Now there is research into creating hybridized DNA without actually creating a living animal, So you're sort of mixing DNA and you're trying to create you're basically trying to create a zygote or uh an embryo without any intention of having it reach maturity, and so that I think could go on. But in terms of actually creating like living animal hybrids, I think there's you know there I think in general, scientists who would be dealing with this would

have ethical concerns. Um, that's not to say that it wouldn't ever happen, you know that that there are there are obviously times when I think, uh uh, things are not you know, or it could be there could be like a really good reason to hybridize certain animals, like for some kind of say important research on genetics that

could potentially help with uh medical research or something. But yeah, there's not often enough utility I think to really make it worthwhile, unless again it's one of these things like that's done in a lab and you're not really creating living animals that you know, have to live with the consequences. So keeping it hypothetical yea, mostly yeah, I mean hypothetical or at the sort of like zygote or multicellular stage.

But sometimes you get again happy little accidents, just like Bob Brass making a painting, but the paintings made out of genes and DNA. So I want to talk about jeeps or geeps. Jeeps jeeps not the car, but a goat and a sheep hybrid. So we talked about this a little earlier about how goat and sheep hybrids are fairly rare because these are intergeneric hybrids. So these are animals from two different genuses. So not only are they

different species, they're from completely different genuses. And they are not super super close genetically, but they can't. They're just close enough that once in a while they can. So most hybrids between a goat and a sheep are still born. They don't survive, but those that do are incredibly cute. And it's usually these happened by accidents. So like you have a farmer who has a bunch of female sheep and has a male goat but no male sheep, but

somehow oopsies immaculate conception. Except no, this is not a Jesus sheep. This is a shoot or a jeep being born Jesus sheep. Jesus sheep passed. He's a savior lambdable, and we are his flock. It all makes sense, but yeah, it is. It's these are very cute. I've sent you guys a couple of photos of what are likely to be. Now it's hard to exactly verify. To really verify, you'd have to run a genetic test on these, but these are these do appear to be genuine cases of a

successful goat cheap hybridization event. And they look like a goat and a sheep. There's really not much better way to describe it, because it's not even like it has a goat body and sheep for like, if they people blending of these two animals. They're so stinking cute. Though. I really staring at this and I'm like, where is the nearest petting farm or I can give it all the love in the world. I wasn't down with goat yoga,

but I might be down with keep yoga show yoga. Yeah, it's they are extremely rare unfortunately, so probably not coming to a petting zoo near you, but yes they are. It is. It is one of those things where or it just feels like Mother Nature is thirst trapping us with these adorable animals. That's like, oh, but you can't pet them because they almost never exist. Speaking of rare and adorable, is the nar luga is a beluga whale and a narwhale. Yes, okay, all right, here's what you

have to understand. It's a freaking huge narwhale Like narm walls are pretty big already with beluga whale size narwhale based on this picture and the tiny little fish underneath that guy, Holy cow, and no horn. Yeah, that's what let's say. There's no horn and all. It's like it's got the head. It's got that, you know, the the what do they call it? But it's like rounded at

the top the melon. It's called the melon. So I'm just like, I have so many questions because technically beluga whale can hear, like they're like they're just their senses are like out of this world. But then like our roll has a horn and so um, it's actually a modified tooth, modified her nerd glasses on um actually, oh man, it was. Is this a painting or an actual thing? The reason this is a painting is we don't actually have any confirmed photos of the nar luga, but we

do know it exists. And this is because we have a skull of an oar luga from the nineteen eighties that has puzzled scientists for over thirty years. So this skull had too many teeth for a nar wall and too few for a beluga. And just because there's no modified tooth, not all nar walls, especially females, don't typically have that modified tooth. So it's really the fact that this skull didn't seem like it could possibly be either a nar wall or a beluga, even though it seemed

pretty close to either one of them. So a hunter in Greenland donated the skull, saying he had killed three strange looking whales which looked like a mix between a narwhal and a beluga. Now I'm not generally against hunting for sustenance, but and I do think it's good this hunter donated the skull to the museum. But if you see three potentially new animals, why are you killing all them? Yeah?

You look interesting, but I'm going to murder right, Yeah, you look you look like something I've never seen before. Better killing this is wild. I'm looking at the skulls uh, the narwhal, the nar luga, and a beluga whale, and it's weird because like both the narwhale and the bluga whales seemed to have a more narrow mouth than the hybrid creature that comes out of them, and also can

have eyes. Yes their skull where in their skull pattern they're tiny, like right on the side like a shark, you see, where like the jaw, the jaw the jaw joint is, yeah, like it would be. The eyes would be like behind that, yeah, above and behind that. Yeah that creaks me out. You can't see straight ahead of you just on either side would brain pattern information looks. But they can also echolocate, so they are seeing seeing

with their brains and sounds. Yeah, Kayla, who is the Star Wars character that's like a robot with a skull and four arms? General? Is that grievous? General? Grievous? Yeah, that's what skull is giving me A lot of generals. Grievous by n Lucascal and I am getting from yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. Theory which is funny because that is kind of what whales sound like sometimes under the water, like maybe maybe skex. This is is whales cute? Do you think we'd be able to recreate the sound that

it makes? Oh? Maybe sort of like that. Remember when they took that mummy and recreated the voice it was which mommy? Which mommy was? That? Was that King tut

or fancies? Was it Ramsey's? But they recreated the vocal cords and voice box and larynx and then they so they did this whole as they used an m r I and they three D printed out its voice box and vocal cords, and then they were very ceremoniously pronounced that they were able to produce a single sound from this recreated voice, and they I guess pumped air through this this model and the voice was this He was

an Egyptian. Yes, yes, and and the way they just so it was so officiously announced like a voice from from thousands of years ago and now we can hear it echoing across the centuries. So to answer your question, maybe they could recreate Luga vocal voice box and then it just goes or that's like, that's it's just funny to me because that's what the That's another thought that comes into my mind with these hybrids. It's like, okay, so which which noise are they going to take on?

Um and and and where did that fall within the traits that they're going to great to get. That's that's very interesting to kind of think about, like how would it sound? Yeah, and it's I mean, it's one of those things where this skull it looks it looks like it's some kind of hoax, like this hunter brought it in, but he just glued some narwhale parts to a beluga skull.

But they ran DNA analysis on it thirty years after it was donated, and it revealed that it was a true hybrid with a narwhale mother and a beluga father. So you know again, it's it's I don't know, it's just in. This hunter, if he's to be believed, said he saw three of them, so it probably they were probably all related. It was probably just a narwhal that all in love with a beluga and had children. I love this love story. I love how cute it is. I love that it's sort of Romeo and Juliet were

from different sides of the ocean. Yeah, maybe we're not supposed to hang out. Our baby is freaking cute. Oh my god, love is a humbler near you? Uh? And here's another one. I bet you can guess just based on this photo of what this animal is. So I get I sent you guys. This is a big cat hybrid. What do you think it is? Wait? Left pi in or is it a lyon pard? And what do we call this? That's very close it's a Leo pond Leo pond. That makes sense. We always very helpful in pronouncing this name.

So this is a scares me. I love it. I think it's awesome. It looks like I'm getting very Oh what's the what's what were those super colorful notebooks that we have, Frank, Yes, cool, let's girl in school. So, so, a leupon is the hybrid of a male leopard and

female lion. They're very rare. They only happen in captivity because leopards and lions do not share the same continent, so they are leopards are found in South America and lions are found in Africa, and so they would have to I guess, get on a plane or a boat to make that affair happen. So these have only happened in zoos in captivity, and they look absolutely bonkers. So they have the males have a main and a spotted

leopard coat. It's it just looks like something if I was if you told me as a child, imagine a cross between a lion and a leopard, this is what I would imagine and doodle on my Lisa Frank notebook. I kind of looked at first like they just put a lion's beIN on a leopard, you know, with like golden rechievers yes, yes, yes, yes, I was like, that's so cute. Owner, that's a real glared beastie. Like cute,

but terrifying. I think about terrifying thought would be like oh if this happened with like a snow leper and be like, oh, that would be like the most crazy you never see him coming, Yeah, it would be done. I'm also thinking about like the vertical leaf leopard tab like they frequently take like giant deer into trees and eat them up there, and then allions like ability to just go forever as far as like running and hunting and stocking. It's right like this is if it were

in the wild. Somehow, I feel like it would be a very formidable creature. Yes, I mean that is a concern when hybrids are created like that, it would basically damage the environment that you release it into by out competing the native populations. And if these are sterile, I mean it's they're just gonna outcompete but then not reproduce or anything. So it's not like you can release them to try to repopulate an area with this new animal.

But what it's interesting you had mentioned like these two like the abilities of leopards to climb trees because reportedly their behaviors seem to be a combination of lion and leopards, so they liked to climb and swim like leopards while sporting this fantastic lion Maine. So it's quite interesting, um and they uh yeah, I mean again, I think it's like, it's really cool. But there's not really an ethical reason for this to exist other than to be fuel for

Lisa Frank and her creative pursuits. And not to knock that, but yeah, it's probably not just it's not worth the risk of creating an animal that has a bunch of health problems. And yeah, but uh, but I want to now talk about one that it seems to be happening in the wild, and it is called the pisley. I bet you can guess what a pisley is. Grizzly and polar bear. Yes, oh my god, it looks so sad, though, where is it this one? I think this one's in

the wild. It's facial expression I think is kind of inscrutable. It's not necessarily sad, but I do like, I do like the idea that it's just perpetually sad, Like I shouldn't exist. So these are a combination of polar bear and grizzly bear DNA. When is it sounds like something again that a mad scientist tries to create to make a monster, like you know and Leelan Stitch, the the guy he creates Stitch as basically just this ultimate monster just for the fun of it. That's what these guys

sound like. Uh. And but these do happen in the wild. So there have been eight d in a tested confirmed wild Pizzley's all descending from the same polar bear mother. Which it's crazy because it's like, I guess this polar bear mom just had a fetish for grizzly bear males. We should not fetishis grizzly polar bear mom together? What is going on? He said? I will um, you know, never go back. So grizzly bears and polar bears, uh live in habitats that don't really always overlapp that much.

But in the Canadian Arctic, especially now that it seems that grizzly bears are expanding their habitat further north and polar bears might start to be pushed out of their normal habitat due to global warming. These grizzly bear and polar bear encounters are more likely, so when they do, like so you can picture what these guys look like. It looks the one I'm looking at now. Of course they're going to be different depending on what salad of

jeans they get. But this one is white with a little bit off white like, uh, sort of a cream colored like a creme brulet situation going on a real toasted marshmallow of a bear. I'm just hungry, is the thing. But it has the it has a it's big. It's maybe a little bigger than a grizzly bear, but it has a grizzly bear shaped head, but polar bear fur and kind of I don't know. It really doesn't look like a blend of the two, but it's definitely Its

head is a little more grizzly bear. Maybe it's snout is a little longer because with polar bears they are long and big, so their heads are actually kind of long, whereas grizzly bears have sort of a more squished in head and rounder head. But yeah, this is really cute. But if I saw this thing in the wild, I would first pee myself and then you know, a wait, deaf. I feel like, what else could you possibly do? This thing is massive. We know polar both grizzlies and polar bears,

giant paws with big claws. Although we've been talking a lot of which animals we'd want to cuddle and if it wasn't a certain death, I'm hell out of this guy. He's so cute. Oh my god, I love him. These guys are just like up in the Yukon or something like where their territories bumped, just chilling. Yeah, I mean so like in the in the Canadian Arctic regions. So yeah, it's like they don't typically share the same environment, but

sometimes there's a little bit of overlap. And I guess that there was that polar bear lady who was just super horny for grizzlies. I wonder what grizzlies to have. The polar bears don't look they're like polar bears are all worried about their environment. And she's like, these guys are way stressed out. I'm gonna go down with the grizzlies where they're just chilling. They made they made her like a verry salad, and she'd never had it before, and she was won over good food will do that.

Like all these dudes are cooking. I'm moving down here. Yeah, it's a seasoned, very salad. I'm where I will be forever. I'm also just like obsessed with that little streak at the top. I just like like, I just it's got a little brown crimbrulet streak at the top. It's very cute. Yeah, Like after he runs after me and they tranquility, I will pitch him. But after after he like rips my face off and is wearing it as a hat, I'm

gonna be like, oh cute. My dad so he is a ocean physics researcher and he's actually been to the Arctic a few times because they do research on the oceans up near the Arctic, and they actually will go out on the ice to do research on the water. They're underneath the ice and they will sometimes encounter polar bears. And I think my dad has seen a polar bear in person before, and he says it is about as scary as you would expect, because they said it's just hard,

like photos don't really do them justice. They're just such huge animals they are, and they're so you can just sense how powerful they are. So I think if I saw a polar bear and a grizzly bear in the wild and somehow lived to tell the tale, I would not be afraid of anything. Ever, Again, she was reasonable. I'm trying to picture like when they're little and they're super cute, big eyes, and if they're dyet, like I know grizzlies eat like fish when the salmon are migrating,

but they eat like like a deer. Two right, Yeah, they're they're quite um, are omnivorous and they will eat. And these guys are super good swimmers. I think I just want to I know we can't. I just want to see all these animals in the l being there like apex predator selves, living their best lives, like tearing out the other animals, like how are they doing this?

Who's this new kid on the block? My god? Yeah, I just want them to thrive and shine and not be just our entertainment and create the ultimate bear, and it just takes over the whole world, creates a bare society. They're president, their president Pisle get it trending, folks, get it trending, Like someone's going to listen to this and start writing on a treatment or a movie that is all about all of these hybrid animals taking over the world. Yes, yeah,

yeah do it? K Poppers stand this bear wanted him to be in Black Pink's next videos. Yes, please see you love them like in their like predatorial adult stage. I just want all of them as babies and then I'll just give them to you when they're ready to go. Yes, a nursery full of hybrid animal ow boy, Oh my gosh, what have I done? What? What hath I wrot? I do?

I do love this story though, because it is it is just like a love story where it's just these bears getting it on in nature and creating these mega bears. I love it. I'm charmed by it. I'm sold on the Pisley here definitely here for him. I'm sure it has there's like negative implications about climate change and habit has changing, blah blah blah. Oh I'm Katie. I care about the environment and I'm always couldn't be there. Yeah,

met Pisley cubs. Pisley cubs. Yeah, but they are wonderful animals. Obviously, if you ever tried to keep one as a pett it would destroy you, uh, in a fashion that's probably really well deserved, but you know, uh it's ah, but yes, I do love them. Look at pictures of the Pisley. Behold the Pisley, Worship the Pisley, stand the Pisley. But that is gonna do it for us today. There are lots of more. There are many more hybrids. One little thing to know. If you google image cool animal hybrids,

you're gonna get a lot of photoshops. So just warning you about that that No, there is not a shark horse hybrid, just so you don't kill our dreams. Katie. Well, thank you guys so much for joining me today. Of course I was joined by Kayla and Joel and so Kaylo,

do you have anything to pluck? Um? No, I'm just hearing my biz out on those Twitter streets, you know, just trying to navigate and they sink, so you can't follow me at Maria double underscore e sella and there is psilo I s l a. Don't FORKI do that. I don't think you have to. Uh, I don't think you have to qualify. Like there's a knee in there, please include it because that's how it's um. But yeah,

you can find me there. I'm just there, work as a PR and marketing associate for Popagenda and meet you all kinds of stuff with indie games. So if your indie games you've been hitting up, do you want about pislies? Yes, yes, I'm going to pitch that to one of our developers yet. And thanks to our producer Joel Monique joining us on the hot mic. Always good to have you on on Actually, wait, Joel, do you want to plug your Twitter? If you're so

inclined to follow me on Twitter, you don't have to. Don't. Don't worry about the If you want you do, don't listen to it's compulsory. You can find me at Monique it's j l E l l E m l N I q u E. And you can find us on the internet at Creature Feature Pod on Instagram at Creature feet Pod. On Twitter that's f e a T, not f e e T that's something very different. And of course you can find me Katie Golden on Twitter at Katie Golden. That's g O L d I N just

my Katie thoughts. Also, I'm doing some some cartoons, some some hot Peanuts parodies of the the of Charles Brown and and snoopert his dog. Totally original concept, so check that out if you If you so shoots and as always, I am at pro bird writes on Twitter, where I make the argument that the bird reckoning is inevitable, so just accept it. Thank you too, Thanks everybody for listening. If you're enjoying the show, kurse splash that button which button?

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