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It doesn't matter that fertile hybrids are unusual. For evaluating this theory, it only has to be possible to produce a fertile chimp-pig hybrid. Then, given a
by a-priori 13y ago
It doesn't matter that fertile hybrids are unusual. For evaluating this theory, it only has to be possible to produce a fertile chimp-pig hybrid. Then, given a large number of chimp-pig... interactions, you can then assume that eventually one would be successful.
(That said, before you interpret this as me supporting the theory, please read my top-level comment)
- darkmighty 13y agoNope, possibility is never enough evidence (disregarding likelihood). The old tale from thermodynamics: "Entropy tends to it's maximum. In reality there is a chance that all air in the room will concentrate in a small spot and entropy will decrease; how often did you see that happening?"
- sageikosa 13y agoThe problem is that those pigs and chimps that try to interbreed and fail would be wasting time and resources and end up falling behind in fecundity to their "breed true" cousins. Evolution would disfavor such behaviors as they would represent a vanishingly small percentage of the their respective gene pools.
- dougk16 13y agoUnless, perhaps, both particular species of ape and pig routinely had sex for pleasure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sexual_behaviour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sexual_behaviour suggests it's possible), and just happened to cross paths. In this case, they're not really wasting resources as they would have been having non-reproductive sex anyway.
- sageikosa 13y agoIt's not just the "casual" contact time; for females, they would very often be wasting a reproductive cycle on a fetus that would (in the statistically significant majority of cases) self-abort.