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Batgod629 t1_j94e1il wrote

Reply to comment by drmehmetoz in Flaco the escaped zoo owl can remain in the wilds of NYC by citytiger

I don't know how genetically close they are to other owl species. However if they are capable I wouldn't rule it out

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fiendishrabbit t1_j955ikj wrote

They're so closely related to the Great Horned Owl (native to the US, including New York state) that they might be conspecific (ie, just two different expressions of the same species), and there have been viable hybrids between the two species before.

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95castles t1_j963ies wrote

MAYBE they manage to have offspring, but I highly doubt those offspring would be fertile.

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resistible t1_j9ajjs4 wrote

Yeah, it could totally be as ineffective a hybridazation as coywolves... wait.

The reality is that of all the predictors we have of whether two species can hybridize, this guy checks a few of those boxes with at least one of the local species. We don't have enough understanding to say very much about viable hybrid offspring coming from this animal.

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95castles t1_j9ak2do wrote

Yeah more research is needed. I would like to be wrong because I find the idea of hybridization to be very interesting. But yeah, I think it’s much more likely for the offspring to not be fertile. And that’s if they do manage to mate in the first place.

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resistible t1_j9aszxq wrote

I don't think they even mate. But I wouldn't have thought that of wolves and coyotes, either. So here we are lol

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