World's First Fox-Dog Hybrid

[Paul_Exeter]

"‘Unusual’ creature found in Brazil is world’s first known fox-dog hybrid, study says"​

https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article279365014.html

 

[catseye]

Ten seconds on Google pulled up this.



Their DNA Is Not Compatible Even if the two animals were of the same genus, other genetic factors would need to be compatible as well. Overall, there are many genetic reasons why a fox and a domestic dog cannot be interbred.

So I'm calling it bullshit. Which is unfortunate because a fox/dog hybrid would be unbearably cute.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Ten seconds on Google pulled up this.



Their DNA Is Not Compatible Even if the two animals were of the same genus, other genetic factors would need to be compatible as well. Overall, there are many genetic reasons why a fox and a domestic dog cannot be interbred.

So I'm calling it bullshit. Which is unfortunate because a fox/dog hybrid would be unbearably cute.

Is the pampas fox a different species to our red fox...?

 

[Xanatic*]

There is a creature called Maned Wolf in South America. While it is neither a wolf nor a fox it does look like a fox on stilts.

 

[AnonyJ]

Is the pampas fox a different species to our red fox...?

A quick squiz on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pampas_fox tells me that the Pampas fox is a zorro or 'false fox' and that they're actually

"...not true foxes, but are a unique canid genus more closely related to wolves and jackals than to true foxes; some of them resemble foxes due to convergent evolution..."

The dog-zorro hybrid is recorded as a rare occurrence:

So it would seem a rare hybrid on a par with something like the Equid hybrids - such as the zebra-horse and zebra-donkey offspring which all show a different phenotype depending on which species was the dam or sire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebroid

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

a fox/dog hybrid would be unbearably cute.

Even cuter than a cabbit?

 

[catseye]

Even cuter than a cabbit?

View attachment 69917

I feel that almost anything would be cuter than that... That looks vaguely demonic.

 

[catseye]

A quick squiz on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pampas_fox tells me that the Pampas fox is a zorro or 'false fox' and that they're actually

"...not true foxes, but are a unique canid genus more closely related to wolves and jackals than to true foxes; some of them resemble foxes due to convergent evolution..."

The dog-zorro hybrid is recorded as a rare occurrence:

View attachment 69911


So it would seem a rare hybrid on a par with something like the Equid hybrids - such as the zebra-horse and zebra-donkey offspring which all show a different phenotype depending on which species was the dam or sire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebroid

So it isn't actually a fox/dog hybrid, more like a dog/distant dog relation hybrid.

 

[kamalktk]

Genetic testing showed it to be a dog/pampas fox hybrid. The paper on the study is here: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/13/15/2505

https://www.sciencealert.com/curious-canine-in-brazil-turns-out-to-be-a-first-of-its-kind-hybrid

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The rescued animal was found to possess 76 chromosomes in total, and these chromosomes had a similar visual appearance to those of domestic dogs and the pampas fox.

What's more, pampas foxes have 37 pairs of chromosomes, which could rearrange with a dog's genome to leave 38 pairs.

While it's still not the same as the dog's 39 pairs, the genetic similarities just might allow for rare combinations of DNA that actually work.

The rescued canid also has two X chromosomes with two different morphologies, which indicates they came from two different species.

An analysis of the creature's mitochondrial DNA, which only comes from the maternal side, suggests its mother was probably the pampas fox and its father was a dog.

 

[RaM]

Even cuter than a cabbit?

View attachment 69917

A friend had what he described as a Rabcat it was certainly strange, it behaved like a cat
with a cats front end but it's rear end looked and moved like a rabbit, he got it off a farm
somewhere.

 

[catseye]

A friend had what he described as a Rabcat it was certainly strange, it behaved like a cat
with a cats front end but it's rear end looked and moved like a rabbit, he got it off a farm
somewhere.

Farm cats are notoriously inbred. On the farm where I worked, most of the youngest generation of kittens had almost square heads, so I'd guess that poor Rabcat was either genetically damaged or had some form of paralysis of the back end. My big old dog, towards the end of his life, used to run with both his back legs together, like a kind of bunny-hop.