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InfiniteMothman t1_j9fbi54 wrote

Not always. Though near enough to 100% that it counts as such I suppose.

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cnhn t1_j9fkfvf wrote

not for panthera.

the male ligers are sterile, the females are fertile

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InfiniteMothman t1_j9hc3gl wrote

Like most of biology. An exception for e very rule. Life, uh, finds a way.

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OllieFromCairo t1_j9fgq0o wrote

Not true. Sometimes the hybrids do just fine, like in the case of tilapia, or apple trees.

It can also be highly sex-dependent. For example, you can cross a domestic cattle bull with a bison cow, and the female offspring will generally be fertile, and the male offspring generally will not be.

However, those hybrid cows can reproduce with male bison, and now almost every bison herd in North America has some fraction of domestic cattle genes in it.

Yak bulls can produce fully fertile offspring of both sexes with Bison cows, but not the other way around.

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FloweringSkull67 t1_j9ficvq wrote

Your example of Apple trees is wrong. Apple trees are spliced to get the strain you want. You could have two apple trees of the same type and the the offspring would be a completely different apple.

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OllieFromCairo t1_j9fla9u wrote

You’re responding to something I didn’t say. I didn’t say anything about fruit variety propagation. Malus sylvestris crosses with M. sieversii, M. coronaria and a bunch of other species just fine, producing fecund offspring.

Whether you get a palatable apple from the cross is an unrelated question.

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PoliticalMilkman t1_j9fd8gs wrote

No. Though that is an easy rule that works a lot of the time, it’s not a hard rule. Canids, for example, are very good at interspecies breeding and produce viable, non-sterile offspring.

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FlebianGrubbleBite t1_j9fidm5 wrote

If that were true humans wouldn't exist. Most humans have DNA from Cross breeding with other species of human like Neanderthal and Denosovens

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