With the realization that homosapiens carry the DNA from nearly a dozen different human species, it got me thinking, are there other animals in the world that are actually genetic potlucks?
Surely right?
Humans aren't the only thing that fucks anything that moves.

Many animals hybridise naturaly, black and blue wildebeest comes to mind.

>>5007418 (OP)
if they can interbreed, theyre not separate species

>>5007418 (OP)
Wolves got their brindled coats by assimilating other canid species

>>5007418 (OP)
Canids are even worse. Trying to ascertain when, where and with what hybridisation happened in various dog lineages is fucking impossible

>>5007875
Yeah, donkeys and zebras are totally the same thing

>>5007418 (OP)
Any close relates mammals. There's also the case of birds hybrids.

>>5007884
fine, if they can interbreed and produce viable offspring, theyre not separate species.
happy now

>>5007892
grolar bears(grizzly and polar bear hybrid), and coywolves(coyote and wolf hybrid), both have fertile breeding populations in the wild

>>5007875
There are different species that can produce fertile hybrids. Humans and Neantherthal for one.

>>5007418 (OP)
Its generally considered the norm for most animals now. Beyond cases where populations are literally split by geologic processes, speciation seems to be a messy gradual process where two or more splitting species regularly still interbreed as they gradually evolve differently.
With contributions going as far as cases like with half compatible hybrids.
The best example is ligers and tigons where only one sex is fertile and can still breed back into ether linage and carry the genes from one to the other and vice versa.
Genetics seems to indicate that lions and snow leopards were interbreeding at a genetically detectable level as late as 2.1 million years ago and they split from each other as early as 4.6 million years ago.

>>5007418 (OP)
Woolly mammoths and Columbian mammoths hybridized with each other quite a bit and even produced fertile offspring. Humans weren't the only ones getting freaky during the Pleistocene.

>>5008914
It turns out that African elephants have been observed producing fertile offspring at a national park in Uganda as well. Top is an African bush elephant, bottom is an African forest elephant and middle is a hybrid. There's also been evidence of African forest elephant DNA in the genome of Paleoloxodon, just like Neanderthals and Denisovans with humans.

Would you a Neanderthal lady?