If you could breed two animals or birds to make a new animal, what would they be?

Question: If you could breed two animals or birds to make a new animal, what would they be?
- Keywords:
  animal,
  bird,
  breed
Asked by layton543 to Sean on 15 Nov 2014.
- Sean Kelly answered on 15 Nov 2014:
  
  Good question! That’s a difficult one too. It is usually only species that are closely related that can be bred together. For example, lions and tigers can be bred together as they are closely related. By closely related I mean they shared an evolutionary ancestor recently. This means that they are evolutionary “cousins” but shared the same great, great, great, great (and on so on…) “grandparents” a VERY long time ago. So that means it would be virtually impossible to bred things together like a lion and a bird as they shared the same “grandparents” even longer ago and have evolved to become so different that they can no longer mate.
  
  However, having said that, sometimes it is fun to forget about science and just imagine these things. Imagine if you could breed a zebra and a giraffe to make a huge giraffe with black and white stripes!

Question: If you could breed two animals or birds to make a new animal, what would they be?