We all know that there are many different breeds of dogs, and there are about 450 dog breeds so far. This is largely the result of human intervention. There is a huge difference between their individuals, such as the fierce Tibetan mastiff and the cute Chihuahua. There are many "strings" in dogs, which are deliberately bred to meet people's different needs. But did you know that dogs can also mate with other animals, such as wild wolves? Do you know what the children born to domestic dogs and wild wolves are called?
Children born from a cross between a domestic dog and a wild wolf may be called a "wolfdog" or "wolfdog", but this is not strictly called. "Half-breed wolves" are their real names. And the wolf dog and wolf dog we often talk about are just a type of dog that looks like a wolf, such as the common German herd, wolf green, horse dog, and so on. Why are wolves and dogs able to breed normally?Don't they have reproductive isolation?Not really. Here we have to talk about the history of dog domestication and the relationship between wolves and dogs.
Scientists believe that all types of dogs today originated from wolves that were successfully domesticated in China's Yangtze River basin 16,000 years ago. This history is less than 20,000 years old, and it is not short enough to form reproductive isolation. From the perspective of scientific classification, both dogs and wolves belong to the gray wolf species under the canine family. And almost all dogs are a gray wolf subspecies. Someone once said, "Tie a wolf to a rope and it becomes a dog." Therefore, the difference between wolves and domestic dogs is mostly in life Xi and temperament, and they can be regarded as a species, and naturally there is no reproductive isolation. So the "half-breed wolf" is also fertile. Both wolves and dogs have 39 pairs of chromosomes, and when they are meiosing**, they do not have synapsis disorders and are able to pair normally. Unlike ligers, mules are "fake species" that do not have the ability to reproduce.
Through wolves and dogs, we know that they are too close to each other so they can mate and reproduce, so can another animal, our "second brother African" hyena, mate with wolves or dogs to produce offspring?Hyenas are famous hunters on the African continent, they live in hierarchical packs like wolves, and a strong female hyena can lead a pack of a dozen to dozens of hyenas. Because of their strong bodies and amazing bite force, they even dare to snatch food from the mouths of lions when they come together. The hyena we often talk about generally refers to the spotted hyena, since the name has a dog, then it must also be a close relative of the domestic dog, and the two must be able to reproduce, right?Not really. If you want to talk about blood, hyenas are even closer to felines than canines. What's going on here?
Scientists believe that the common ancestor of modern carnivores is the Maltozomon, which appeared 50 million years ago. It is the common ancestor of modern canine, feline, bear, and other animals. In the middle of the Eocene, the malt Simon began to diverge into two major groups, the suborder Canine and the suborder Feline, which are the ancestors of modern canines and felines. And the hyena, precisely under the suborder cats. Of course, this does not mean that the hyena is closer to the cat, after all, it has its own separate hyena family, which is equal to the feline family and the canine family. There are two subfamilies under the hyena family, the hyena subfamily and the coyote subfamily, which contain four known hyena families: spotted hyenas, striped hyenas, brown hyenas, and coyotes. From this we know that hyenas and dogs are not the same species, and that they are reproductively isolated from each other. And the name hyena is entirely due to problems with early translations, and now that it is used more, there is no need to change it.
Hyenas are not dogs, just like whales are not fish, and there are many similar situations in life. This is mostly based on people's first impressions. With the progress of science and technology and the development of archaeological research, human beings have become more and more clear about the classification of natural things around themDo you know any other examples of "not living up to the name"?You can discuss it in the comment section.