A 2010 study published in the journal Nature listed 34 possible hybrid species that could be breeding due to melting polar ice and global warming.
The reason for mixing is that species that live in isolation must move in and reproduce with new individuals and species. Newly created hybrids over time They can push it out Indigenous species and their genes.
New colors, new fur
In 2006, in the USA and Canada, they already encountered hybrids born from mixing brown bears and polar bears. Known as “polar bears” or “pizzlies”, this animal has brownish-white fur and a nose similar to that of both the polar bear and the brown bear.
Because of the thaw, polar bears move inland to forage, while brown bears venture north to hunt, so the two species could meet.
In the 1980s, a hunter came across a strange creature in the western part of Greenland, and researchers began examining its skull in 1990, according to which it might be a hybrid of a rhinoceros, commonly known as a water rhinoceros, and a beluga. DNA analysis in 2019 confirmed that the creature is 54 percent beluga and 46 percent rhino — on the maternal side. The first-generation hybrid had a narwhal tail and a beluga fin, and had teeth similar to both animals, but lacked the rhino’s tusks. Depending on the specific concentration of carbon and nitrogen in the skull, the hybrid, unlike its parents, forages for food on the sea floor, that is, it feeds on something different from its ancestors who hunted on the surface.
Scientists told about the animals that live in the Arctic Ocean
Species’ genomes are shuffled, and adaptive gene pools are lost.
The emergence of hybrids is nothing new, in the past, when animals had to move, they would easily mix with new species. In the eastern part of North America, decades ago, a coyote was foundwolf A hybrid (“coyote”), which had a larger body, skull and jaw than western coyotes. It is believed to have evolved when coyotes expanded their range from west to Algonquin Park in Ontario.
Hybrid species listed in Nature include porpoises and bottlenose dolphin hybrids seen off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. They resemble porpoises in their external features, but their behavior is reminiscent of bottlenose dolphins because, like them, they are fast. (Dahl’s dolphin can swim at speeds of up to 55 km / h, it is also called hyperactivity).
Most likely in the north
Although mating between different species does not always result in offspring, arctic species are more likely to do so because their chromosome numbers have not changed over time. David Withrow of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) saw a hybrid whale in 2009,
I couldn’t identify it, even with my good binoculars. I’ve sent your photos to my colleagues on the east coast of the US who are more familiar with Pacific right whales. They must have claimed that the animal looked like a right whale, but also something else.
According to a 2010 study, right whales move north, where the ice is melting, where they meet and mate with other whales.Oceanfor some reason.
Species mixing didn’t escape the flying squirrels either, according to Dr. Jeff Bowman of the Ontario Department of Natural Resources and Forests, hybrid north-south flying squirrels began appearing around 1995. In his 2009 study, he detailed how warm winters caused flying squirrels to move south to northern habitats and to breed with northern flying squirrels. The structure of the hybrid squirrel is similar to the southern one, but its fur is colored in the northern species (grey and white belly).
(Cover Photo: (Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket/Getty Images)
