So, to make this clear, I am talking about like lions and tigers mixing, not lions and humans.
I had to do research on this topic in science, and from all of the reading I did I thought this would be a great topic for an article. This is pretty much an opinion piece.
This happens in captivity and naturally.
When done in captivity, I think this is horrible and not something that should continue to happen. In school, I looked at the pro's and con's of the subject. They ended up all being pretty much the same, but there were many more con's. Many big cat hybrids end up with birth defects. In the article "The Thorny History of Hybrid Animals", it states, "Many big cat hybrids suffer birth defects and never make it to adulthood. If they do, they can pass these mutations on to future generations because, though the males are sterile, the females are fertile.". This just causes so much more pain for the animals.
Other animals hybrids also have problems like this or other problems that affect them so much where they can't reproduce or can't live very long.
Hybridization that occurs naturally can be fine though. Cuban alligators are alive because of it. Many of them contain American alligator DNA. In the same article it states, "About half of all plant species on Earth arose through hybridization. Even humans participated in this hybridization early in our history–many of us carry a little Neanderthal DNA.". This shows that most of us are alive because of hybridization.
So, this debated subject overall has several up's and down's.
Tell me what you think at teasippersweb@gmail.com. Give me arguments, comments, etc. Hope you liked this.
-mwah, Kaleena