[Animals] This is the first hybrid of dog and fox, a unique genetic rarity

[FNX Magokiler]

In 2021, a dog-like animal was taken to an animal rehabilitation center in southern Brazil after being hit by a car. Shortly after, veterinarians observed unusual behavior.

The animal looked and barked like a dog (although it featured long, pointed, fox-like ears), but it also climbed bushes, a behavior more typical of the local Pampas fox, and refused common dog food, preferring to eat rats.

The keepers began to wonder if it might not be a hybrid, a mix of a domestic dog and some wild canid from the area, so they contacted Thales geneticist Renato Ochotorena de Freitas and Rafael Kretschmer, from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, who last month published a study confirming that the animal was the first documented dog-fox in the world. The discovery excited and intrigued animal genetics experts.

"What a strange hybrid beast!" wrote Roland Kays, a biologist at North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (United States), on X (formerly Twitter), along with a photo of the creature and a link to the study.

He added that, although hybridization between species is well known among more related animals, such as dogs and wolves, the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) and the Pampas fox (Lycalopex gymnocerus) belong to "two genera separated by 6.7 million of years".

 

 

"This would be expected to be seen in trees, but not in vertebrates," says Loren Reiseberg, a geneticist at the University of British Columbia (Canada). "It's as if humans produced a viable hybrid with chimpanzees!"

Some animal hybrids are well known, such as the mule (a mix of a mare and a donkey), the hinny (a mix of a donkey and a horse) or the liger, a mix of a lion and a tiger, but the case of Brazil was somewhat different.

The creature, a female, was named "Dogxim," a cross between "dog" and graxaim do campo, the Portuguese name for the Pampas fox. And although it is the first, it may not be the last of its kind. Environmental changes could lead to more dog-fox hybrids in the future, a possibility that could have problematic consequences.

Discovering a hybrid
The first step to confirm the possibility that Dogxim was a hybrid was to determine the number of chromosomes in its cells. It had 76 in total, a clue that scientists could use to determine its species, since the same species usually has a fixed number of chromosomes. The maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) is the only canid in the region with 76 chromosomes, but its appearance and behavior ruled it out as a possible progenitor.

 

https://www.nationalgeographic.es/animales/2023/09/primer-hibrido-perro-zorro-rareza-genetica-unica-doxim-brasil