First Ever Wild Grizzly/Polar Hybrid Shot

tavilach writes "Jim Martell has a license to hunt polar bears, but when his latest kill had "white fur [that] was spotted brown and it had the long claws and slightly humped back of a grizzly," officials seized the body in order to conduct DNA tests. These tests confirm that the dead bear had a polar bear mother and grizzly father, the first documented grizzly-polar hybrid in the wild. This was lucky for Jim, who was facing a fine and jail time for possibly killing a grizzly. Scientists who would have liked to study the bear are not so lucky."

Comments

Re:Was it a mule?

[RsG]

"If the two types of bear can mate and produce fertile offspring, then
they are really the same species."

Nah, different species can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Look up "ring species" for examples where A can breed with B, and B can breed with C but C cannot breed with A.

Mostly this reflects the fact that the term "species" is a fairly arbitrary distinction that goes back before our understanding of evolution.

Re:Was it a mule?

[lubricated]

If the two types of bear can mate and produce fertile offspring, then
they are really the same species.
That's really an older view of things. There are many animals that are concidered different species even though a fertile rare hybrid appears. The most obvious is wolves, coyotes and dogs. But also different species of abalone, cicklids(sp?) are other examples. Biologists have a hard time defining on what exactly makes a species, because horizontal gene transfer among what are considered species happens surprisingly often.

Pathetic that this animal was shot...

[Entropius]

So it's apparently legal to shoot polar bears in Canada, despite the fact that they're considered one of the animals facing increasing threats in the future from withdrawing sea ice?

And it's also legal to shoot a half-grizzly, even though shooting grizzlies is illegal?

What a waste of a magnificent (and apparently rare) animal. I'm probably one of the more pro-hunting folk around here; I grew up eating deer and gamebirds shot by my father, and have a bunch of respect for people who know how to turn a shotgun shell or rifle bullet into dinner. But these wealthy big-game trophy hunters, who look for rare and wondrous animals only to shoot them and turn them into rugs or wall ornaments, make me sick.

Imagine if some guy wandering around the Antarctic finds a meteorite with evidence of Martian life in it, and whacks it with a sledgehammer...

trophy "hunters"

[loomis]

This was previously discussed at another forum yesterday, and the general consensus was what a complete travesty it is that this animal was killed by a "trophy hunter."

Interestingly, the people who were most offended were other hunters. Not trophy hunters, but those who hunt legally as a means to control herd populations and to feed their families. In my experince, standard hunters aren't so inexperienced and quick to shoot at anything that moves than a normal hunter. I mean you've got to get somethingto show for your 45K right?

And now, because this "hunter" didn't know the value of this animal, it is dead before it could be studied further and / or protected.