Seven Amazing Animal Hybrids
Zedonk
A zedonk foal was recently born in Dahlonega, Georgia at the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve. With a zebra father and a donkey mother, the zedonk sports black stripes on her legs and a donkey-like stature. It's very rare for zebras and donkeys to mate, but it's happened before — at the very least once in 2005 and three times in the 1970s, according to the Gainesville Times. Such offspring are called zedonks, zonkeys, zebrinnies or even zebrulas.
Zorse
Zorses are a more common hybrid, often bred in Africa to trek Mount Kenya. As the name suggests, zorses are half-zebra, half-horse, and are much stronger than typical horses. Though most zorses don't look this fancy, this zorse, named Eclyse, gained media attention in 2007 for her unique coat.
Beefalo
Cross a cow with a buffalo and you get a Beefalo, a hybrid that produces meat lower in fat and cholesterol than normal beef. Beefalo meat is, naturally, hard to find — only a few grocery stores in Seattle carry it. And if you want a real, accredited Beefalo, it must be three-eighths bison, five-eighths bovine.
Liger
Napoleon Dynamite may have drawn his own fictional liger, but these big cats are definitely real. Ligers tend to look like lions with stripes. They enjoy swimming, which is a tiger-only trait, and they are sociable like lions. Ligers have to be bred from male lions and female tigers — the reverse are tiglons, which are less likely to live past birth, and ligers and tiglons cannot mate.
Cama
Researchers in the United Arab Emirates crossed a camel with a llama to form a cama, which has the cloven hooves of a llama and the short ears and long tail of a camel (but no hump). Initially a product of scientific tinkering, researchers hoped the cama would be the perfect pack animal, with more strength than a llama but more agreeable than a camel.
Wolphin
The result of breeding a bottlenose dolphin with a killer whale, wolphins are a rare hybrid. Two exist in captivity, although there have been occasional reports of rare (and adorable) specimens being sighted in the wild.
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