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Ligers and Tigons and Grolars, Oh My! Hybridization, and How It Affects Biodiversity

- Lila M. Colston-Nepali & Deborah M. Leigh

When two animals of the same species mate, their offspring get 50% of their genes from each parent. This is what makes you look like a mixture of your parents. Hybrids are crosses between two difference species, so they contain 50% of genes from each parent species. A famous hybrid is the mule, a cross between a donkey and a horse. Fifty percentage of a mule's genes are from a horse and 50% from a donkey. Because of this mixing, mules have features of each parent species and are strong, like donkeys, as well as intelligent, like horses. Farmers breed mules because this combination makes mules excellent for carrying supplies. Using hybridization to combine the desirable aspects of each parent species is very beneficial to humans, and hybrids are often used in farming. Many of the delicious fruits you buy at the grocery store were even created through hybridization! Bananas, grapefruit, carrots, and cucumbers are all hybrid species. There are actually hundreds of banana varieties, but most of us are familiar with a hybrid banana. Farmers kept mixing varieties of bananas to create the perfect combination of soft, tasty fruit without too many seeds.

License information: CC BY 4.0
MPAA: PG
Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2019.00113

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