What is a Hybrid?

The term hybrid comes from Latin hybrida, meaning the "offspring of a tame sow and a wild boar", "child of a freeman and slave".

Anthropogenic hybridisation is changes to the environment caused by humans, such as fragmentation and introduced species, are becoming more widespread. This increases the challenges in managing certain populations that are experiencing introgression, and is a focus of conservation genetics. Humans have introduced species worldwide to environments for a long time, both intentionally such as creating a population to be used as a biological control, and unintentionally as accidental escapes of individuals out of agriculture. This causes drastic global effects on various populations, including through hybridisation.

Another type of hybrid comes from Ancient folktales that often contain mythological creatures, sometimes these are described as hybrids (e.g., hippogriff as the offspring of a griffin and a horse, and the Minotaur which is the offspring of Pasiphaë and a white bull). More often they are kind of fantasy, i.e., a composite of the physical attributes of two or more kinds of animals, mythical beasts, and often humans, with no suggestion that they are the result of interbreeding, e.g., harpies, mermaids, and centaurs.

Hybrids between different subspecies within a species (like the Bengal tiger and Siberian tiger) are known as intra-specific hybrids. Hybrids between different species within the same category (lions and tigers) are sometimes known as interspecific hybrids or crosses. Hybrids between different animals (like sheep and goats) are known as intergeneric hybrids.

The third type of hybrid involves the crosses between populations, breeds or cultivars within a single species. This meaning is often used in plant and animal breeding, where hybrids are usually produced and selected, because they have desirable characteristics not found or inconsistently present in the parent individuals or populations.

Examples of some Hybrids include:

·         Mule, a cross of female horse and a male donkey.

·         Zeedonk or Zonkey, a zebra/donkey cross.

·         Zorse, a zebra/horse cross

·         Sheep-goat hybrid is the cross between a sheep and a goat,

·          A hybrid between a Bengal tiger and a Siberian tiger is an example of an intra-specific hybrid. It also includes the Indochinese tiger, Sumatran tiger too.

·         Pumapards, crosses between a puma and a leopard.

·         Ligers and tigons, crosses between a lion and a tiger - the difference in name due to what species the mother and father were - ligers have a lion father and a tiger mother. Other wild cat crosses are known involving the lynx, bobcat and leopard.

·         Wholphin, a fertile but very rare cross between a false killer whale and a bottlenose dolphin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_(biology)

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