Species defintion: Cattle verse Buffalo
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A crossbreed or crossbred usually refers to an animal with purebred parents of two different breeds, varieties, or populations. Crossbreeding refers to the process of breeding such an animal, often with the intention to create offspring that share the traits of both parent lineages, or producing an animal with hybrid vigor. While crossbreeding is used to maintain health and viability of animals, irresponsible crossbreeding can also produce animals of inferior[clarification needed] quality or dilute a purebred gene pool to the point of extinction of a given breed of animal.
The term is also used at times to refer to a domestic animal of unknown ancestry where the breed status of only one parent or grandparent is known, though the term "mixed breeding" is technically more accurate. The term outcross is used to describe a type of crossbreeding used within a purebred breed to increase the genetic diversity within the breed, particularly when there is a need to avoid inbreeding.
In general use, the term hybrid is commonly used to refer to plant breeding, such as that of maize, though "hybrid" is also used to describe crosses between animals of the same genus but different subspecies, such as the mule. "Crossbred" is more often used to refer to animal breeding within a single species.
WIKI
cosmictraveler,
Yeah that not helpful, I'm questioning this specific usage of the term species not crossbreeding, Since the buffalo is capable of making fertile offspring with cattle, and sense most living Buffalo are not genetically pure and have cattle in them, I don't see why they are anything more then a sub-species, and how they can be classified as different species, na, even different genus is confusing to me.
Yeah that not helpful, I'm questioning this specific usage of the term species not crossbreeding, Since the buffalo is capable of making fertile offspring with cattle, and sense most living Buffalo are not genetically pure and have cattle in them, I don't see why they are anything more then a sub-species, and how they can be classified as different species, na, even different genus is confusing to me.
The liger is a hybrid cross between a male lion (Panthera leo) and a tigress (Panthera tigris). Thus, it has parents with the same genus but of different species. It is distinct from the similar hybrid tiglon. It is the largest of all known cats and extant felines.[citation needed]
Ligers enjoy swimming which is a characteristic of tigers and are very sociable like lions but are more likely to live past birth than tiglons. However ligers may inherit health or behavioural issues due to conflicting inherited traits, but this depends on the genetic traits of the parents. Ligers exist only in captivity because the habitat of the parental species do not overlap in the wild. Notably, ligers typically grow larger than either parent species.
This is another way to put it as well.
Ligers enjoy swimming which is a characteristic of tigers and are very sociable like lions but are more likely to live past birth than tiglons. However ligers may inherit health or behavioural issues due to conflicting inherited traits, but this depends on the genetic traits of the parents. Ligers exist only in captivity because the habitat of the parental species do not overlap in the wild. Notably, ligers typically grow larger than either parent species.
This is another way to put it as well.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
There is no rule against two related species being capable of interbreeding, nor of thriving in the same habitat.
It is common for two species in the same genus to be able to mate and have viable offspring. Wolf-coyote hybrids are migrating down from Canada to take over the territory of the wolves we exterminated (and to finally solve our deer overpopulation problem). Black-headed grosbeaks and rose-breasted grosbeaks encountered each other when we cut down the forest along the Mississippi River that separated their habitats, and multi-generation hybrid grosbeaks are now seen in California. The mule is a horse-ass hybrid, and the zebrass is... well I suppose that's obvious.
Hybridization is common practice in domestication. Cats have been bred with ocelots. Within the various genera of parrots (Amazons, African greys, cockatoos, macaws, conures, grassland parakeets, etc.) aviculturists have created some amazing hybrids, such as the Lavender Macaw, a third generation hybrid that's seven parts Scarlet Macaw and one part Blue and Gold Macaw. As noted, lions and tigers have been hybridized, although in this case it usually must be done by AI since their mating rituals are so different that they can't arouse each other.
This is a typical reason for related species not crossbreeding, by the way. There's more to it than DNA.
Often the reason that crossbreeding doesn't happen routinely is that one or both of the species adapted to a slightly different environment so they simply don't encounter each other. Polar bears and brown bears can mate, but neither of them could survive in the other's habitat, so what would the poor baby do?
Another reason is simply wandering off in a different direction so they never run into each other. The American bald eagle and the Asian white-tailed eagle are only separated by about ten thousand years of evolution, but they never visit each other's continent.
Hybrid offspring are not always capable of reproducing, so this can be a dead stop to the creation of a hybrid population. Horses and asses have a different number of chromosomes, and as a result mules are almost never fertile.
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Fraggle is correct.
The definition of separate species is simply two species that do not interbreed in the wild. There are numerous reasons for this, and genetics is only one possible reason.
Cattle and bison do not interbreed in the wild. Therefore, by definition, they are separate species.
The definition of separate species is simply two species that do not interbreed in the wild. There are numerous reasons for this, and genetics is only one possible reason.
Cattle and bison do not interbreed in the wild. Therefore, by definition, they are separate species.
Also, I don't think you find naturally occuring mules. The differentiation in horses and donkeys is fairly obvious to them, if not us. They may be over 99% genetically similar, but in genetic terms 1% can be all it takes from one species to another. We are only about 3% genetically different from chimps for example..Or 97% similar if you like.
Bison aren't bison anymore, at least not the American buffalo what with most of the surviving stock having some cattle heritage so how can they still call that a separate species, worse how can they even say the American buffalo is not extinct what with the survivors being hybrids of something else? And its difficult to say how this came about, it could have simply been a matter of having them graze together and they humped on there own accord: at what point do you say they can't interbreed in the wild? Clearly they were able to interbreed withing cattle farms.
Now thought experiment: Native Americans and Caucasians did not naturally interbreed, they were separated by thousands of miles of ocean, so are they separate species? In fact there a many similarities between native Americans and Caucasians and buffalo and cattle: both surviving stocks have significant interbreeding with their latter counterparts, both suffered near "extinctions" both were and came from the same geographic areas and both clearly were interbreedable. Yet Native Americans and caucaisan are homo sapiens, not even subspecies apart, and buffalo and cattle are a whole genus apart, why, speciesism?
I liked the old biology class simplicity of a species being such because they can't or very unlikely to form viable offspring, like horse and donkey produce a mule which is sterile, or a tiger and lion form liger or a tiglon which is too unhealthy to likely survive in the wild. Buffalo and cattle on the other hand clearly were classified off of appearance and geography with no weight attached to the fact they can make viable offspring to such a point that the remaining population of the former is now polluted with cattle genes. Using simply appearance and geography to classify a species sound kind of hypocritical in context to how we classify humans, heck we use to claim Negroids were a whole sub-species apart from the "glorious white man", at least we could acknowledge they could be interbred, yet Buffalo and cattle are a genus apart and might yet only be as different from each other as black people are from white people!
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How about for starters they are generally not considered to even be in the same genus
Bison: the amercan bison
Bos: burger meat, cow, cattle
yeah, yeah... you don't read do you?
I forgot how arrogant you were. I read. probably more than you considering you asked the question your question it seems is based on ignorance. in these cases of cross breeding they usually consider it to be both though with the minimal amount of genes it it would probably be considered still the base species.
( hybrids are listed as (species of male x species of female) though this is only for the most basic of cross)
by your question should the Savanna breed of domestic cats still be considered domestic cats even though they probably have( at F1 and F2 probably most definitely more) more not species genes?
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Yep its a domestic cat, a novel breed of one but since its breed in captivity for domestic use I would say it domestic.
The business of where one species ends and another begins has always been somewhat arbitrary. Nature is not particulate, but a continuum. Thus, all gradations between taxonomic divisions will exist.
The definition of "two populations that do not interbreed in the wild" is not perfect, and it is easy to find borderline or outright wrong cases. However, it does not need to be perfect. Maybe one day biologists will come up with a definition based on percentages of genes not shared, or something similar. Until then, this is the best we got.
In the mean time, arguing about something that is fuzzy is not going to settle anything. Two debaters can be on opposite sides of a viewpoint, and both of them may be equally correct.
The definition of "two populations that do not interbreed in the wild" is not perfect, and it is easy to find borderline or outright wrong cases. However, it does not need to be perfect. Maybe one day biologists will come up with a definition based on percentages of genes not shared, or something similar. Until then, this is the best we got.
In the mean time, arguing about something that is fuzzy is not going to settle anything. Two debaters can be on opposite sides of a viewpoint, and both of them may be equally correct.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
There is a sequence of events in the process of speciation.
- First, a species separates into two populations. In plants, fungi, etc., this can be due to seeds/spores carried by the wind or in the feces of birds. In animals it can be due to deliberate adventurous migration, riding driftwood across the sea, or in aquatic or aerial species being distributed by currents.
- Then the species diverge genetically, from genetic drift or from environmental pressure on natural selection. At some point they become separate subspecies (animals) or varieties (plants).
- Eventually they may diverge to the point that they qualify as separate species.
It's also the reason that Native Americans and Europeans maintained distinct gene pools until 500 years ago: they never met each other. (AFAIK no biologist, however, would go so far as to call them separate subspecies since there is not nearly as much variety in the human gene pool as there is in cats. We've squeezed through a couple of major genetic bottlenecks in just the last 200,000 years: Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam.)
If the subspecies remain separated long enough, then they may develop courtship rituals that discourage them from interbreeding, even if they happen to encounter each other. But this is unusual. Generally, two subspecies of the same species will begin interbreeding if environmental conditions (or human tampering with the environment) reintroduce them to each other.
It's only when they make the final transition to separate species that they become unlikely to interbreed. And even then, some species simply are more inquisitive and adventurous than others, and individuals will be interested in experimenting with inter-species dating. Coyotes and wolves, or the two species of North American grosbeaks, as I mentioned in an earlier post. In the latter case hybridization is utterly rampant and a single hybrid population is clearly the future of the black-headed-rose-breasted grosbeak; in the former, it is common enough to keep the wolf's gene pool from vanishing from attrition.
(The word you're looking for is speciation.) The reason is geography. The American bison has been separated from any population of cattle for something like 15,000 years, when they migrated across Beringia and speciated from the Eurasian bison. (Well wait, much longer than that because cattle had not yet been domesticated so there weren't any in Siberia.) They would probably interbreed with the wisent, the surviving European species of bison, if they met them, but no one has introduced them to each other. Interbreeding with cattle, a different genus, is an exceptional phenomenon and is directly attributed to the population collapse of the American bison in the 19th century caused by overhunting. Bison simply couldn't find mates so they settled for cattle--just as the Canadian wolves are doing with coyotes. After all, when a really large animal becomes so desperate that he or she will settle for a much smaller mate, the smaller animal is hardly going to complain. What a tremendous advantage for his/her children!
Genetics is simply not so cut-and-dried. There are other instances of species being able to hybridize across genus boundaries. The Collson macaw is a crossbreed of a hyacinthine macaw, Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus, and a blue-and-gold macaw, Ara ararauna. Aviculturists have been breeding them for more than twenty years. I haven't kept up with the field so I don't know whether they have been successful with a second generation, so I don't know if there's a chromosomal mismatch as there is with horses and donkeys/asses--which are not from different genera. For that matter, the ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) and the domestic cat (Felis silvestris libica) belong to two different genera, and crossbreeding is widely practiced in the pet trade, even into the second generation. People want kitty-cats that can stand up to the coyotes that have invaded the cities of the Southwest.
The domestic cat is the North African subspecies of the wild cat, Felis silvestris libica. Like the dog, it self-domesticated, hunting the rodents that plagued human settlements and accepting the food, comfort and companionship that was offered in gratitude for the service.
Or incorrect.
Just a small and trivial comment to do with Fraggle's post.
Fraggle said :
" Like the dog, it self-domesticated, hunting the rodents that plagued human settlements and accepting the food, comfort and companionship that was offered in gratitude for the service."
Fraggle and I have argued this point before. I do not believe the dog is self domesticated. Rather an improbable event. Rather, like many zoologists, following the excellent experimental work of Russian Belyaev on silver foxes, I believe the dog is the result of adoption of wolf cubs, and the elimination of aggressive ones, thus breeding a non aggressive wolf, otherwise called a dog.
Fraggle said :
" Like the dog, it self-domesticated, hunting the rodents that plagued human settlements and accepting the food, comfort and companionship that was offered in gratitude for the service."
Fraggle and I have argued this point before. I do not believe the dog is self domesticated. Rather an improbable event. Rather, like many zoologists, following the excellent experimental work of Russian Belyaev on silver foxes, I believe the dog is the result of adoption of wolf cubs, and the elimination of aggressive ones, thus breeding a non aggressive wolf, otherwise called a dog.
So? Native Americans and Caucasians have been separated until recently for several dozen thousand years, so speciation?
Oh that a very interesting hypothesis, but I don't see what it has to do with squat, cowboys took their native "princesses", what barring does this have on defining something a separate species, even separate genus?
There are other instances of species being able to hybridize across genus boundaries. The Collson macaw is a crossbreed of a hyacinthine macaw, Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus, and a blue-and-gold macaw, Ara ararauna. Aviculturists have been breeding them for more than twenty years. I haven't kept up with the field so I don't know whether they have been successful with a second generation, so I don't know if there's a chromosomal mismatch as there is with horses and donkeys/asses--which are not from different genera. For that matter, the ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) and the domestic cat (Felis silvestris libica) belong to two different genera, and crossbreeding is widely practiced in the pet trade, even into the second generation. People want kitty-cats that can stand up to the coyotes that have invaded the cities of the Southwest.The domestic cat is the North African subspecies of the wild cat, Felis silvestris libica. Like the dog, it self-domesticated, hunting the rodents that plagued human settlements and accepting the food, comfort and companionship that was offered in gratitude for the service.Or incorrect.
Oh goody so there have been more instances where taxonomy has failed us! I would think when successful fertile offspring are produce the taxonomist would re-list these organisms in recognition. But instead its completely have hazard. Take the wild boar, Sus scrofa, all domestic pigs are usually regard as its sub-species Sus scrofa domestica dispite their very different appearance and habits, they are all interbred, even Sus scrofa castilianus which has a different chromosome count (36 instead of 38) yet is still regards as just a sub-species and can still interbred. So again why are buffalo a whole genus apart from cattle, when there are other species who are merely sub-species apart, yet are separated by the same amount of geographical, physiological and genetic differences.
I thought the domestic cat was felis cattus?
There are plenty of bison around, entire herds, even wild ones.electric said:
They have not interbred with feral cattle, despite opportunity.
They have several obvious and significant differences from domestic cattle, from diet to physiological features to behaviors both individual and social. The fact that they can hybridize in captivity in no way removes these true-breeding differences from consideration.
Probably a good many of the Bovidae could be hybridized, in domestic breeding circumstances - for your consideration: http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/83/4/287.full.pdf
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Hardly. Have you ever seen raccoons or squirrels in a park? They're intelligent and curious enough to learn to recognize people who are actually trying to feed them for the sheer fun of it, and they even learn to do little entertaining tricks to encourage more participation from the nearby humans. (They bring their kids, because they know there is nothing on earth cuter than a baby raccoon eating a marshmallow.)
I saw a wildlife documentary on hyenas. As opportunistic feeders they'll happily scavenge human trash dumps as easily as hunting. One African guy kept holding out a leg bone from a large animal that had been cooked, and after a couple of days a hyena came and grabbed it. They ended up playing tug of war, and he rewarded they hyena for his company by letting him have the bone.
Corvids (crows, jays, etc.) get pretty nonchalant about hanging out with humans, waiting for handouts.
Bald eagles have figured out that no American will ever harm them because we'd be thrown in jail (one of the stupid birds ran into a locomotive, and the poor engineer had to answer a lot of questions!), so they just fly into crowds in parks and steal their sandwiches.
As I've reported before, since we exterminated all the deers' natural predators in the USA, they've been breeding for intelligence rather than speed and agility. I've watched deer stand on the curb at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn green, and then walk across with the pedestrians, realizing that the cars will stop for the humans so they're safe.
If you ever see a deer panhandling in a park, DO NOT FEED HIM. They can be really pushy if they think we like them.
As I noted earlier, there is not enough variation in human DNA for speciation to occur as quickly as it might in other animals. The two dogs or cats in your living room probably have an enormously greater difference in DNA than there is between a human in Norway and one in Borneo.
We've been through two genetic bottelenecks: every one of us is descended from Mitochondrial Eve, who lived less than 200,000 years ago, and every one of us is descended from Y-Chromosome Adam, who lived less than 100,000 years ago. That really wipes out a species's genetic diversity!
BTW, your timetable is wrong. The first human migration to the Western Hemisphere was only 15,000 years ago, not "several dozen thousand." However, the Native Americans are an Asian people (or the old term "mongoloid") which differentiated from the "caucasoids" around 40KYA. Still not enough time for subspeciation, not in our genetically impoverished species.
Affordable DNA analysis has rewritten the taxonomy tables. The domestic cat is the North African subspecies of wild cat; that's one of the places where agriculture was invented first, so there were granaries full of rodents to attract the cats to the places of human habitation. This only happened once. Humans took their domesticated cats to remote places, and/or traded them with neighboring communities, faster than the domestication experiment occurred elsewhere.
The same thing happened with dogs. They are all descended from a very small number of wolves in Mesopotamia, and they spread around the world before any other dog pack was domesticated. (Previous suspicion that they originated in China during the Paleolithic Era turned out to be wrong after more extensive DNA analysis. They originated during the Agricultural Revolution, and came to clean up our trash rather than to help us hunt.) And also, it turns out that dogs and wolves are the same species. They have enough differentiation (smaller brains, modified dentition, different instincts) that they're classified as a subspecies, Canis lupus familiaris.
Wikipedia does not agree. It says that of the 350,000 wild American bison, the vast majority are genetically polluted by cattle DNA. There might be as few as a couple of hundred pure-blooded Bison bison in existence, and apparently most of them are at high risk of brucellosis, which is a population-reducer.
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