Comment on Polar bears

FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Image

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  • AngryishHumanoid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Hey, Mac! You still have that Halloween costume?

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• cRazi_man@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Golar bears and Pizzley bears

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  • FourGreenFields@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    The number of confirmed hybrids has since risen to eight, all of them descending from the same female polar bear

    She has a type.

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    • chellomere@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      She likes them brown boys

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      • superkret@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        fun fact: polar bears have black skin.

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  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Scary… Polar bears comming to my house! Slightly larger whiter Grizzlys still a problem.

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• Dasus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Biologists wouldn’t say they’re the same species, because biologists are aware of interspecies hybrids and the species problem.

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• LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  There are tons and tons and tons of species that can do this. It’s not clear to me what the prevailing species concept is nowadays, if we’re even still following one.

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• xwolpertinger@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Fun fact: Grizzlies and Polar Bears are the same species according to the Biological Species Concept.

  Calling it that gives it too much credit, it is something thought up in the 17th/18th century without any concept of genetics and evolution.

  Which might explain why it breaks down almost instantly under any amount of scrutiny.

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  • barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It’s a category. All lines are arbitrary to a degree and “interbreeds and produces viable offspring” is not terribly arbitrary. You can have arguments around populations which could and would interbreed if they weren’t geographically distinct, you can argue about whether offspring needs to be viable no matter which way around the sexes of the parents are, or how large the percentage of viable offspring needs to be, but in the end, yep it makes sense to have a distinction somewhere around that bunch of criteria.

    House cats and European wild cats are considered distinct species not because they’re genetically incompatible, but because they don’t interbreed – too many behavioural differences, and we’re not speaking about culture, here. So even if they could intermingle in theory in practice they don’t, so they stay separate, so they’re different species.

    It’s kind of… a behavioural view on the genome? If you have a better idea, field it.

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• steal_your_face@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  So are Neanderthals and homo sapiens the same species then?

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  • bluewing@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Close enough that we probably bred them out of existence. Neanderthal genetic markers show up with some regularity in certain modern human populations.

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