More Animal Sexual Deviance

First we find out that there are gay animals. Now we find out that there are species that like to have sex out side of their species (is that considered beastiality?). It is getting so a parent can't let their kid watch the nature shows anymore with all the immorality that is going on.

National Geographic had an article about how this can lead to new species:

Most new animal species are believed to arise when a single species splits into two. But new animals can also be created when two species come together to create a single new species, the researchers say.

Turner says recent evidence indicates that some fish species also evolved as hybrids.

German researchers have studied cichlids (a type of tropical freshwater fish) living in tiny volcano-crater lakes in Cameroon, West Africa. Their studies have shown that at least one cichlid species started off as a hybrid.

Interesting. Makes you wonder how much of evolution is driven by this cross-species mating. Sure seems like it would speed the whole process up with all the extra genetic varience thrown in.

Also makes you wonder what the heck the definition of a species is. I had thought that species were defined by who they could procreate with. Otherwise, why wouldn't you consider different races of humans or different breeds of dogs be different species? They certainly look different. But, I guess that is not the case.

Then there is Napoleon Dynamite's "pretty much my favorite animal" the liger. National Geographic had another article on them:

It's half lion, half tiger, and completely real. Now thanks to a cameo in the 2004 cult movie Napoleon Dynamite, the liger has leaped into the limelight, prompting fans to ask, What are they really like?

The faintly striped, shaggy-maned creatures are the offspring of male lions and female tigers, which gives them the ability to both roar like lions and chuff like tigers—a supposedly affectionate sound that falls somewhere between a purr and a raspberry.

Weighing in at about a thousand pounds (450 kilograms) each, they typically devour 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of raw meat in a meal.

Lion-tiger mating occurs in captivity.

For unknown reasons they let a dumb-ass biologist comment:

"Crossing the species line" does not generally occur in the wild, because "it would result in diminished fitness of the offspring," said Ronald Tilson, director of conservation at the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley.

Only to be refuted a paragraph later in the same article:

"The interesting thing about these animals is that they have the best qualities of the tiger and the best of the lion," said movie actress and conservationist Tippi Hedren, who has run Shambala since 1972. "Those qualities manifest themselves in the fact that they like to be in the water [a tiger trait] and are very social [a lion trait]."

Then there was the dolphin-false killer whale baby: wholpin that happened a while back. And there was even a case of a an animal dying after having sex with another animal 10 times its size. What a silly species.

With all these different species mating, makes you wonder what evidence scientists are looking at when they say that humans never mated with neanderthals (or at least that they didn't have offspring).