mongoosemazanec wrote: ↑Sun Nov 13, 2022 9:36 am
By the way, is a wox (or folf) like Clovis fertile? I am pretty sure felineXcanine are sterile (IIRC...I binge read the archive) and, say, coyoteXwolf would be fertile (they even are in RL).
Well, it's explicit that
Kathrin is sterile and implied that this is pretty common for felineXcanine crossbreed Keidran, but not stated just how common.
Somewhere I got the impression that at least one of Kathrin's parents was also a crossbreed.
Thing is, though, I think that if the crossbreed infertility rate was anywhere close to 100%, the feline and canine Keidran wouldn't be regarded - by themselves or anyone else - as a single species.
With horseXdonkey, it's just barely shy of 100%. (There are like 8 documented instances of female mules giving birth in the past 1200 years. And even today, when we have very limited use for them, there are about 25,000 mules in the US alone.)
Polar bears and brown bears are regarded as separate species, even though they are apparently genetically fully compatible (and there is a subspecies of brown bears that is descended from polar bears), because their ranges don't overlap much during breeding season.