Tower Of Babel

Recently I heard of the liger (cross between a lion and a tiger). I also heard of a donkey-zebra mix, even more recently than I heard of the liger. Tonight I heard of the wholphin, which from the name I gathered to be a cross between a whale and a dolphin! That appears to be what it is indeed! I was awestruck when I heard of this and immediately I googled the term to see what this amazing creature looked like.

Apparently there is only one wholphin in captivity, and that animal recently mated with a regular bottle-nosed dolphin to produce a 3/4 dolphin-1/4 false killer whale mix. Then I asked myself, “Whats a false killer whale? I’ve never heard of one!”. Thats turns out to not be surprising, because its a relatively newly discovered species, it seems it was discovered around the mid 1800’s. Here is a link to a page describing the False Killer Whale and here is a page with some pictures.

Apparently these two species are not that far apart though. Its said that wholphins do occur in nature, and that may be likely since these false killer whales are usually found in large groups swimming together and sometimes, in mixed groups with bottle-nosed dolphins. Who’d have thought?

I wonder whats up with this spate of mixed breed animals, and what exotic mixed animal we’ll hear of next. It seems to me that while some of these animals may occur in the wild, the chances of them reproducing increase a lot when thay are kept in captivity. Its probably not something to be encouraged, IMHO…

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