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I'm sure you'd agree that a wolf and a chihuahua are different species. Yet they can interbreed and the offspring would likely be fertile as well. Species are p
by rjf72 7y ago
I'm sure you'd agree that a wolf and a chihuahua are different species. Yet they can interbreed and the offspring would likely be fertile as well. Species are primarily created when two groups do not interbreed for a sufficiently long period of time resulting in an accumulation of distinct differences. The crazy thing is that time period is not especially long. The time distance from wolf to chihuahua is only about 15,000 years!
Major physical differences (such as wolf) or inability to interbreed or infertile offspring (such as mules) are all just rules of thumb. For instance zebras and horses are clearly distinct species yet they physically appear extremely similar sans their coloring, can interbreed, and there have even been instances of fertile offspring.
- inciampati 7y agoThey are not different species in any traditional biological sense. Yes, they look different due to radical changes in developmental pathways. But the differences are not actually very extreme genetically. They have almost exactly the same basic biology.
- Retric 7y agoSpecie’s definition predates our knowledge about genetics so it’s an imperfect mapping.
- rjf72 7y agoAs a peer mentioned, species predates genetics. But even when you go for a genetic solution it's not clear. How would you propose this? For instance various studies using different metrics put humans and chimps at between 95% and 99% identical. It's the counter intuitive thing about genetics. But then to further confuse the picture is that genome-wide variation between humans can differ by as much as 0.5%. So clearly drawing a genetic boundary between species seems it's subject to the exact same difficulties as our previous phenotypical classifications.