Dolphin Whale Hybrid! Dirty Perverts!!

[pErvinalia]

Scientists Have Spotted an Amazing Dolphin-Whale Hybrid Off The Coast of Hawaii

The first ever known of its kind.
MICHELLE STARR
30 JUL 2018

A little bit of interspecies nookie has resulted in an unusual child that now lives in the waters off the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

According to a new genetic analysis, his dad was a rough-toothed dolphin and his mum was a melon-headed whale - the first ever known hybrid of its kind.

The cetacean was first spotted in August 2017, by researchers with the Cascadia Research Collective on a two-week field trip funded by the US Navy to document marine life around the Pacific Missile Range Facility ahead of a training course.

"We had the photos and suspected it was a hybrid from morphological characteristics intermediate between species," marine biologist Robin Baird told The Garden Island.

The team was able to obtain a biopsy, using a crossbow equipped with a special dart that prevents deep penetration and returns a skin sample.

This confirmed the animal's parentage - and the finding is really unusual, not just because it's the first known rough-toothed dolphin/melon-headed whale hybrid.

The melon-headed whale, which the researchers also observed hanging around during their expedition, is also relatively rare in the waters of Hawaii. There was one large pod, estimated to be somewhere between 200 and 300 individuals. In addition, they saw and tagged pantropical spotted dolphins, also rare in Hawaiian waters.

But there was also a perhaps greater anomaly. One melon-headed whale was also spotted chilling with a pod of rough-toothed dolphins. This, the researchers believe, could be the hybrid's mother, who is now living with her new family.

Before you go tie your head in knots wondering how a whale managed to successfully reproduce with a dolphin - it didn't. Like orcas, beluga whales and pilot whales, melon-headed whales are actually a species of dolphin, or delphinidae - and dolphins are a sub-family of whales to boot.

And, although rare, other dolphin hybrids are known, such as the offspring of a bottlenose dolphin and false killer whale (also delphinidae), called a wholphin, and the offspring of a beluga whale and a narwhal, called a narluga.

https://www.sciencealert.com/melon-head ... redanensis

[JimC]

The male was the dolphin equivalent of lak...

[pErvinalia]

[NineBerry]

If you read the text, the whale is actually a dolphin

[NineBerry]

If you read the text, the whale is actually a dolphin

[JimC]

On a more biological note, I'll hazard a guess that the hybrid is sterile, like mules and ligers...

[NineBerry]

Or the two species are so close that he/she isn't

[JimC]

Or the two species are so close that he/she isn't

For vertebrates to be assigned to different species, even via pre-DNA taxonomy, it would be very rare for the species to be close enough genetically to seamless reproduction, to the point where hybridisation would lead to the species merging. Not impossible, but unlikely.

[NineBerry]

We will have to get us a big bath tub and and some dolphins to find out!

[pErvinalia]

If you read the text, the whale is actually a dolphin

You don't say?

There needs to be a vaccine for being German..

[NineBerry]

Well,the German name for "Melon-Headed Whale" is actually "Breitschnabeldelfin" (Wide-Billed Dolphin)

[laklak]

The male was the dolphin equivalent of lak...

I used to say my ex-wife was a dead fish in bed, this dude takes it literally.

[cronus]

Could be Russians behind this?

[Scot Dutchy]

Too American.