Based on: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/s...hybrid-of-two-other-dolphin-species.html?_r=0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholphin I was thinking about hybrids amongst dolphins. There are some 40 different species of dolphins listed, but many seem capable of mating and creating hybrid specimens, which are themselves not sterile (a sterile offspring is otherwise the definition of two distinct species, e.g. horses and donkeys creating sterile mules). So is it worth considering at least some of the multitude of dolphin species, while different in physiology, not as much as individual species, but more as ethnicities or sorts? (And yes, this may also say something about ourselves.) Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! A rare wholphin (a bottlenose and false killer whale hybrid) with calf, Sea Life Park, Hawaii
I don't know, I'm trying to wrap my head around all the racial problems we still have all over the world. And for some reason, cetaceans popped into my head, and I started to do a little research.
Homo sapiens did indeed hybridize with other Homo species, notably the Neanderthals. Europeans descended from the earlier Indo-European migrations (not the newcomers like the Slavs and Hungarians) have about 5% Neanderthal DNA. But in Asia we find hybridization with other species. The groups we call "races" are merely populations that have been separated for a few thousand years--a very short time for a species that only goes through fifty or sixty generations in a millennium. The DNA of a human in Iceland and one in Borneo do not differ significantly enough to designate them as separate subspecies--or "races," a term that is no longer used by biologists. This blurring of population DNA has been happening on a much larger scale since the Bronze Age (4000BCE), when the wheel, draft animals and sailing ships made it possible for people to travel long distances and mate with the ones they found at the end of the journey. "Race" is an almost-imaginary characteristic of modern humans. The concept is perpetuated by politics and religion, and has no basis in biology.
