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KarinM.weird
KarinM.weird

cat gives birth to cat-puppies?

Weird, wacky and wonderful things

KarinM.weird


cat gives birth to cat-puppies?
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Are Mimi the cat's offspring the first known cases of interbreeding between cats and dogs? Her litter of six, born in Passo Fundo, Brazil, contained three doglike offspring. Their three siblings with more feline features died soon after birth.
Mimi's owner, Cassia Aparecida de Souza, claims Mimi was found mating with a neighborhood dog three months ago and that her offspring are (supposedly) a result of that encounter.

Dogs and cats belong to distinct species, meaning that they should be unable to interbreed. A geneticist from a local university plans to analyze blood samples from the animals in an attempt to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Story: news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/11/photogalleries/wip-week4/photo3.html

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This is amazing!
Karin (Open your mind. Travel.) Woodinville, WA, Dec 24, 2006
Amazing to see on National Geographic, isn't it? It's a good story that gets you thinking... folks assume that interbreeding between species is impossible but we've seen the Wolphin at Sea Life Park in Hawaii, a (fertile) cross between a killer whale and bottlenose dolphin. In biological research, chimeras are artificially produced by mixing cells from two different organisms. This can result in the eventual development of an adult animal composed of cells from both donors, which may be of different species — for example, in 1984 a chimeric geep was produced by combining embryos from a goat and a sheep (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29 ) .

I really want to believe this is true - the "puppens" are so cute.
KarinM (bE dIfFeRenT) Bellevue, WA, Dec 24, 2006
OK, lets straighten this out. the definition of a species is a group of organisms capable of breeding and producing viable offspring.

lions and tigers are able to do this. so technically they are the same species.

horse, donkey, and zebra, only became a separate species in the last handful of thousand years (and are all equines). because of this they are still able to create offspring, but not viable offspring (they are sterile).

unfortunately for all the possible "puppen" lovers out there cats and dogs separated so far back on the evolutionary tree that they aren't even in the same family. you might as well try and breed palm tree and an arm chair.

sadly the "report" is fake
DrJeremyDrover Red Deer, Canada, May 25, 2007
I'm not sure anybody believes the puppen story, what's amazing about it is the source. Why is National Geographic publishing this as truth when it's so obviously improbable? It's fun to read about interesting cross-breeding and wonder how far scientists will be able to go in a laboratory situation. The question of "what is a species?" is evolving and controversial.

Take the wolphins at Sea Life Park in Hawaii. Their existence contradicts the current definition of species. They're certainly not the same species or even the same genera: Pseudorca crassidens (father). and Tursiops truncatus (mother), yet they exist and can produce viable offspring. You have to go all the way up to the Family level for the taxonomic connection in this case. false killer whales are members of the family Delphinidae, that is, dolphins and not true whales, so the wholphin is a 100% dolphin and not really "whale."

Most textbooks define a species as all the individual organisms of a natural population that generally interbreed at maturity in the wild and whose interbreeding produces fertile offspring. Various parts of this definition are there to exclude some unusual or artificial mating (but not broad enough to cover the wolphins, whose parents mated of their own accord). The textbook definition works well most of the time, but there are quite a few situations where it breaks down.

"No term is more difficult to define than "species," and on no point are zoologists more divided than as to what should be understood by this word"(Nicholson,(1872). This quote was true before Darwin started writing and is just as true today. If you’ve ever been in a room full of taxonomists discussing this issue you’d have to agree!
KarinM (bE dIfFeRenT) Bellevue, WA, May 25, 2007

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