15 Animal Hybrids You Didn’t Know About: Grolar Bears, Yakalos, & Wholphins!

A grolar bear is a cross between a polar bear and a grizzly bear and is one of the few documented hybridizations that occurs naturally in the wild. In 2006, a hunter in Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories on Banks Island in the Canadian Arctic shot and killed a strange looking bear. DNA testing later confirmed it was a wild grolar bear. Canadian officials have considered naming the new species “nanulak” from the Inuit words for polar bear (nanuk) and grizzly bear (aklak), but colloquially “grolar bear” has caught on.

An extremely rare hybrid, wholphins are the result of love between a female bottlenose dolphin and a male false killer whale. And while name implies a cross between a dolphin and a real Jonah whale, it is deceiving as both species fall under the “oceanic dolphin” family. Regardless, they have been reported to exist in the wild, and Sea Life Park in Hawaii also has one in captivity. Wholphins have proven to be fertile.

A beefalo is a fertile offspring of a domestic cow and a bull American bison. Produced mainly for niche beef production, most beefalo are cow in appearance and need only be about 38 percent bison to be called “beefalo.” Usually anything over 38 percent is tokened the much less fun name “bison hybrid.”

A cama is a hybrid bred from a male dromedary camel and a female llama. First bred in Dubai in 1998, the purpose of this hybrid was to create a species with the wool quality of a llama but with the temperament, size and strength of a camel. A sizable majority of camas are born infertile, which is a common plague on most hybrids.

A tigon is a sterile cross between a male tiger and a lioness. A liger is a cross between a male lion and a tigress, and was made famous in the 2004 film <em>Napoleon Dynamite.</em> A liger is also recognized as the largest cat in the world due to the fact that it does not inherit growth inhibitor genes. Ligers and tigons have been known of for centuries, and there is some debate whether they once occurred naturally since historically Asiatic lions and tigers territories had overlapped.

The Iron Age pig is an example of “backbreeding,” or artificial breeding selection by humans to acquire an animal that physically resembles a species from earlier times. In this case, the Iron Age pig is a hybrid from a wild boar and a domestic sow in an attempt to gain the appearance of pig species represented in art from the Iron Age. The only real purpose of this species is for speciality meat markets, predominantly in Europe.

A yakalo is a cross between a bull yak and an American bison cow. Not occuring in the wild, they were created by scientists in the 1920s while conducting experiments in hybridization. Sometimes the yak bulls were bred with pure bison cows, while other times they were bred with “beefalo” cows, or bison-buffalo hyrbids. Very few of the yakalo calves actually survived and the program was discontinued in 1928.

Pheasant hybrids have been around for a long time. Darwin even wrote about them in his magnus opus <em>The Origin of Species.</em> Nowadays, hybrid gamebirds occur both naturally and by manmade occurrence and are particularly trendy for hobby farm enthusiasts.

A leopon is the lovekitten resulting from a male leopard and a lioness. A jagupard is the opposite, born from a leopardess and a male lion. Given both big cats’ temperaments, a hybrid of either fashion is unlikely to occur in the wild. The first documented case of a hybrid was in 1910, whe a leopon was bred in India for its skin.

A pumapard is a hybrid between a puma (cougar) and a leopard. One of the more interest notes of this big cat pairing is, they are opposite a liger in that they exhibit dwarfism. First bred in the 1890s in Chicago, they became a global wonder and many influential Europeans (even reportedly Lord Rothschild of England) vied to get one.

A wolfdog is a canine hybrid that occurs when a gray wolf and a dog mate. Usually bred with a dog breed that already physically resembles a wolf, e.g. the German Shepherd, Alaskan Malamutes, etc., the resulting appearance of a wolfdog is highly unpredicatable. Wolfdogs are usually bred for dog owners who desire a more exotic looking pet, and any pet with a wolf heritage at least four generations back can legally be considered a wolfdog.

A zeedonk, aka “zonkey,” is a sterile offspring of a zebra and a donkey. Not altogether that amazing as zebras and donkeys are both considered mules, they do occur in the wild where zebra and donkey populations live in close quarters, particularly Africa.

A zorse is the colt of a male zebra and a female horse. It has also been called a zebrula, zebrule, zebra-mule, or the wax poetic “golden zebra.” The rarer reverse of a female zebra and a male horse is sometimes called a horbra, hebra, zebrinny or zebret. Like most equine hybrids, the zorse is sterile.

The beast of all beasts, it is the offspring of a male tiger and a female liger/tigon or a male lion with a female tigon/liger. Extremely rare, these creatures are usually found in private ownership and under the eye of a behavior studies program.

While not yet a reality, and obviously falling under questionable ethics, parahumans have no doubt been a subject of scientific wonder. Crossing humans with other animal species using unnatural, scientific methods has been an idea for generations, and technology is evolving to allow it. Some scientists claim that the creation of parahumans could help cure disease and ultimately make a better human … if it could still be called that.