Animals, we either love them, fear them, cage them or hunt them. If we are domestic types, we might have a dog or cat or even a bird or lizard. Those of us that want something a little more exotic might collect snakes. I have a friend who had quite a snake collection, in fact you could say that his basement was full of the damn things. It smelled awful. These things didn't seem to have much affection for him either. I remember when he was feeding a snake, yes that is right a Large snake, a mouse, yeah that is another thing to hate, and the snake put its fangs right through his hand. First he had to beat the mouse senseless. I thought that this was terrible and asked him why, he replied "we wouldn't want the mouse to scratch the snake." His wife hated the snakes and the mice too. Sometimes they would get out and run around the house. One day a mouse ran up her dress. I wonder why she didn't like them? Here is the kicker, he started feeding the snake rats. He decided that they were too expensive to buy, so he began to raise his own. These weren't those dirty gray rats you see, but what is know as hooded rats. They were almost like pets. When he needed a rat to feed to the snakes he would reach in to their cages and like some terrible god, snatch some unsuspecting creature, knock him out and toss him to the snakes. Nope snake collecting is not for me.

Wolf Dog
Photo Source: USDA

Wild creatures are all over this world of ours. The more adventurous will go out in the woods or parks and snap photos of the creatures, if they aren't too shy. As far as wild creatures go, squirrels are my favorite. I used to have one that would come up to me every time I would sit outside my house. If I was eating a piece of fruit or something, I would give him a piece and he would sit next to me like a trained dog. Everyone used to laugh. Geese can be found all around where I live. Some fly in from Canada and I am not sure where the others come from. There are also Mallards and white ducks. I guess this is because there are ponds and lakes all over. Some of the geese will come up to you after they get there courage up, if you have something to eat. The ducks sort of wait behind. The geese and duck population have grown so much that the local governments has stopped people from feeding them. They tried to shoot some of them as food for the poor, but they were too infested.

Moving on to the wild, we have all heard of the bigger animals, some of which are very dangerous. We don't have any Lions or Tigers that I know of in the U.S., but we do have mountain lions, sometimes known as cougars. There are alligators in the southern regions and bears everywhere. Bears are extremely dangerous. I had a friend in the U.S. Army that was killed by a Polar Bear. He was stationed in Alaska, on guard duty I believe, and a Polar Bear attacked him. He was carrying an M14 rifle that held a magazine of bullets. Apparently he emptied the entire magazine into the bear, but it killed him before it died. These are very tough animals and extremely hard to kill, yet there are people that go out and hunt them. Personally, I don't like to kill something unless I need it for food. I guess I am getting soft in my old age, but hunting is not for me.

Common Hybrid, The Mule
Photo Source: NPS

Talking about animals, I read an interesting article lately. It stated that DNA testing has shown that there was a hybrid bear living in the northern part of Canada. It is the first time anyone has ever proven that a grizzly and polar bear ever mated in the wild. It seems it was discovered because a guide for a hunter noticed that a bear that had been just shot, had white fur with brown spots. The dead bear was tested and its DNA shouted out that is was a polar-grizzly bear. The bear was shot at the southern end of Banks Island in the Beaufort Sea. The guide knew that the bear just didn't look right. It had black rings around its eyes, it had a small hump and its face was set in slightly. This is not the first time grizzly bears have mated with polar bears, it has happened in zoos.

Here is a strange thing, in the wild you will never see large cats of different types mating, but if you put them together in a zoo or set them up for breeding, they will breed. An example of this is when a Male Lion and female Tiger mate. Have you ever heard of a Liger? That is what their offspring is called. It has the head of a lion but the body of a tiger with the stripes of a tiger on its body and legs. Only cats with Male Lion fathers and female Tiger mothers are Ligers. If a male tiger mates with a female lion you will get a Tigon. If you mate tigers with Tigons you get even stranger animals. At least their names get funnier such as tig-liger. Ligers are presumed to all be sterile. A Liger is the biggest cat in the world. Some people breed wolfs with dogs, I am not to crazy about this idea because wolves are wild animals and I always felt that this might give the dog some dangerous traits. This is a list of the top ten hybrid animals. I don't know what this means exactly, but here is the list:

10. Liger/ Tigon - Lion and Tiger.
9, Wolf Dog - Wolf and Dog.
8, Iron Age Pig - Domestic Pig and Boar.
7. Zebroid - Horse and Zebra. There are sub breeds such as a Zorse, Zonkey. Yep Zebra and horse or donkey.
6. Cama - Camel and Lama.
5. Grolar, Pizzly - Grizzly Bear and Polar Bear.
4. Leopon - Male Leopard and female Lion.
3. Hybrid Pheasant - Golden Pheasant and Lady Amherst's Pheasant.
2. Wolphin - Bottlenose Dolphin and Killer Whale.
1. Ti-Liger, Ti-Tigon, Li-Tigon, Li-Liger - Crosses between Ligers and Tigons with Lions and Tigers

As I said I am not exactly sure what a top ten animal hybrid list means, but it is interesting never the less.

Here is the big question we have all been waiting for, don't tell me you never thought about it. Are there any human hybrids? There may have been. Bones have been found that indicate that there was a possible Neanderthal Cro-Magnon walking around. This has not been absolutely confirmed yet. If he was, he was alive about 25,000 years ago and died at about four years old. The bones were found in a Portuguese rock shelter. The discovery was made in the Lapedo Valley, which is north of Lisbon. Even though Neanderthals were believed to have been extinct about 3,000 years before the boy was born, the bones indicate he was descended from Neanderthals. There is more to this unfortunately. A chimera is a creature that is part human and part animal. Technically Chimera in zoology, relates to an animal that has two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated in different zygotes. It was stated in the National Geographic News, in an article online, dated January 25, 2005, that Chinese scientists in Shanghai successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs and embryos resulted. They were allowed to live for a few days in a laboratory dish and then were destroyed. Ugh!! Lastly, the Washington Post.com ran a story on February 13, 2005, that had a headline that read, "U.S. Denies Patent for a Too-Human Hybrid" , I think that this is self explanatory.