• Question: Can 2 different species breed? like a bird and a hedgehog?

    Asked by vickymufc to Charlotte, Jo, Kevin, Louise, Valeria on 13 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by casiacecilia, salman1998, sophk, happysally.
    • Photo: Kevin Mahon

      Kevin Mahon answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      Marvellous question – one that has befuddled many scientists and hampered many theories over the years.

      Firstly, you should know there is considerable debate over what the definition of a species actually is! I know this sounds crazy, but there are many ways we can potentially categorise animals (Check out google for The Biological Species Concept, Ecological Species concept etc).

      But under what most of us regular day to day scientists would consider to be a species, then the answer to your question is yes – although nothing as dramatic as a bird and a hedgehog!

      When two different species breed they make a ‘hyrbid’.

      Some examples….

      – Horse + Donkey = Mule
      – Horse + Zebra = Zorse (no seriously)
      – Lion + Tiger = Liger (again, seriously)
      – False Killer Whale + Bottlenose Dolphin= (wait for it) Wholphin
      – Land Iguana + Marine Iguana = Hybrid Iguana
      – Honey Bees + African Bees = KILLER BEES (This one was done by humans in an attempt to make tamer and more easy to manage bees. As you can tell by the name, this didn’t work out so good)

      So there you are, hybrids – two sifferent species breeding. You can probably tell a trend from the examples I’ve given (there are many more), hybrids usually occur between very closely related species. I don’t think we’ll ever see viable offspring from a hedgehog and a bird, even though that would be amazing/terrifying.

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