Normal
Sorry. No cigar. "Hybrids," as misunderstood by the lay-person, between two species occur all the time in nature, and by the hand of man. Examples are the common mule, red factor canaries, ligers and tigons, and even suspected between Homo sapiens (modern man) and Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man)!Rs50matt -Congratulations, my friend! You've just reopened a huge can of particularly ugly worms that we had all hoped was sealed forever! There are all kinds of problems with the terms themselves, the concepts, and the underlying philosophies behind what you're trying to sort out. And everybody has their own (usually inaccurate, if not outright wrong) definition. As a result, we find ourselves back in the days of Babel. Here are a few items to gnaw on as this thread unravels:There is no single, all-inclusive definition for what a species is. In the last century, a brilliant scientist by the name of Earnst Mayr tried to define a species as a reproducing POPULATION of organisms that routinely produced offspring that were essentially like their parents. (I hope I got the reference to Mayr right. If not, forgive me. It's been over 50 years since I had to learn this stuff in college!) But when you are looking at some slimy, squiggly thing in one hand, it's very hard to use that definition to justify calling it a different species from the squiggly, slimy thing in your other hand! That definition is of little or no help at all in what is called a "differential diagnosis."If we can't be sure of what a species is, how can we be sure of what a hybrid is? Okay, so maybe we should sidestep the whole issue and use the term "kinds" instead. If you have two different kinds of tarantulas that manage to produce offspring (e.g., a curlyhair and a redrump) when interbred, are the offspring "hybrids?"Well, we really don't have a good definition, a differential diagnosis type definition, to tell us how to recognize a hybrid when we see one either! In fact, there are numerous examples of creatures (in the broadest sense, including but not limited to bacteria, fungi, vascular plants, protozoans, worms [choose your favorite!], vertebrates, etc.) that exist as nominally different and separate "species," for which there are "intergrades" where the two kinds' populations overlap! Are these hybrids? Or "legacy" populations of the original progenetive organism before it diverged into two different kinds? Or a third kind beginning to evolve away from the others?3) Back-in-the-day when I took a college genetics course, geneticists didn't care very much about species, but rather about whether or not two copies of a gene or chromosome were similar in makeup, or different. If they were different, they were often called "hybrid." Using that definition, we - every living one of us, and all those who are dead as well - are hybrids!Many, MANY moons ago, on another forum, long since defunct, one chap roundly chastised another contributor who was also asking about hybridizing two kinds of tarantulas. It was obvious from the outset that our hero of the first part was still delusional from the high school biology definition of species, while our hero of the second part, while he was asking a perfectly rational question, was completely ignorant of the maelstrom that he stepped into!I wish you better luck, my friend.
Sorry. No cigar. "Hybrids," as misunderstood by the lay-person, between two species occur all the time in nature, and by the hand of man. Examples are the common mule, red factor canaries, ligers and tigons, and even suspected between Homo sapiens (modern man) and Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man)!
Rs50matt -
Congratulations, my friend! You've just reopened a huge can of particularly ugly worms that we had all hoped was sealed forever!
There are all kinds of problems with the terms themselves, the concepts, and the underlying philosophies behind what you're trying to sort out. And everybody has their own (usually inaccurate, if not outright wrong) definition. As a result, we find ourselves back in the days of Babel. Here are a few items to gnaw on as this thread unravels:
There is no single, all-inclusive definition for what a species is. In the last century, a brilliant scientist by the name of Earnst Mayr tried to define a species as a reproducing POPULATION of organisms that routinely produced offspring that were essentially like their parents. (I hope I got the reference to Mayr right. If not, forgive me. It's been over 50 years since I had to learn this stuff in college!) But when you are looking at some slimy, squiggly thing in one hand, it's very hard to use that definition to justify calling it a different species from the squiggly, slimy thing in your other hand! That definition is of little or no help at all in what is called a "differential diagnosis."
If we can't be sure of what a species is, how can we be sure of what a hybrid is? Okay, so maybe we should sidestep the whole issue and use the term "kinds" instead. If you have two different kinds of tarantulas that manage to produce offspring (e.g., a curlyhair and a redrump) when interbred, are the offspring "hybrids?"
Well, we really don't have a good definition, a differential diagnosis type definition, to tell us how to recognize a hybrid when we see one either! In fact, there are numerous examples of creatures (in the broadest sense, including but not limited to bacteria, fungi, vascular plants, protozoans, worms [choose your favorite!], vertebrates, etc.) that exist as nominally different and separate "species," for which there are "intergrades" where the two kinds' populations overlap! Are these hybrids? Or "legacy" populations of the original progenetive organism before it diverged into two different kinds? Or a third kind beginning to evolve away from the others?
3) Back-in-the-day when I took a college genetics course, geneticists didn't care very much about species, but rather about whether or not two copies of a gene or chromosome were similar in makeup, or different. If they were different, they were often called "hybrid." Using that definition, we - every living one of us, and all those who are dead as well - are hybrids!
Many, MANY moons ago, on another forum, long since defunct, one chap roundly chastised another contributor who was also asking about hybridizing two kinds of tarantulas. It was obvious from the outset that our hero of the first part was still delusional from the high school biology definition of species, while our hero of the second part, while he was asking a perfectly rational question, was completely ignorant of the maelstrom that he stepped into!
I wish you better luck, my friend.