Pied Pony!

http://208.106.181.133/_media/imgs/a...15-zebroid.jpg

This site has wasted two days of productivity, thank goodness my truck is broke down so I have an excuse!

according to this site 15 coolest photos your never believe aren't photo-shopped. Maybe not the coolest photos ever but pretty darn cool.

Mike

Those are pretty cool!

We have zonkies (donkey/zebra) and zorses (horse/zebra) at our local auction all the time. Although, I've never seen a paint zorse-that one is a regular zorse, but they colored it white so it looks like a paint. I'm thinking it would be pretty hard to make a paint zorse because the zebra pattern is so dominant and hybrids are sterile. We really wanted a zorse, but they go for $15,000+ :( :rofl:

cool pics thanks for sharing!!

That's not a regular zorse that's been painted, it really is a Paint zorse. The tobiano and other similar genes in horses are dominant, not recessive the way they are in ball pythons. So it's not difficult to create a "Paint" zorse.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

That's not a regular zorse that's been painted, it really is a Paint zorse. The tobiano and other similar genes in horses are dominant, not recessive the way they are in ball pythons. So it's not difficult to create a "Paint" zorse.

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The legs looked funny to me. I looked for more pictures other than that one, because that is the only picture I've seen of that zorse, and I found some different pictures. So I believe it's a paint zorse now and not photoshopped.

I figured it would be really hard to make a paint zorse because the zebra pattern seems to trump almost every color/pattern it's breed to. Even a homozygous paint still throws 25% "normals" and that's according to APHA (American Paint Horse Association), I just figured the zorses ended up being solid paints if they were paints, because the dominance of the zebra. I did find a FjordxZebra and it still had the Fjord color and characteristics, so I guess if the genes are strong enough they can shine through the zebra pattern/color. It makes me think of breeding mules and how difficult it is to get a paint mule unless you are lucky enough to have a paint jack.

I know that paint horses are different than ball pythons, I have a paint mare, a tovero to be exact.

Edit: Oh my bad, I was reading it as "you won't believe are photoshopped" not "weren't photoshopped" :rolleyes:

Why are the hybrids sterile?

Mike

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We really wanted a zorse, but they go for $15,000+

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I wanted a zorse too. But I heard their temperments tend to lean towards the zebra side and can be difficult to work with. Still, it would awesome if I had one to take into the dressage ring. My friends with their friesians, fells and gypsys get a lot of attention from the judges. I bet a zorse would really turn heads :D

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Originally Posted by hoax

Why are the hybrids sterile?

Mike

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I think every hybrid animal is sterile right?

Ligers, mules, zorses, zonkies, male calico cats (just a fun fact), all are almost always sterile. There have been 4 mule mares, that I've read about, that have gone on to breed and have a foal. One of those foals produced also had a foal, but it ended there. Those mules that were able to breed had a genotype of horse and a phenotype of a mule. That's why they were able to breed, and I'm guessing that's why all other hybrids aren't able to breed.

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Originally Posted by NYDragon

I wanted a zorse too. But I heard their temperments tend to lean towards the zebra side and can be difficult to work with. Still, it would awesome if I had one to take into the dressage ring. My friends with their friesians, fells and gypsys get a lot of attention from the judges. I bet a zorse would really turn heads :D

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Lol yeah they are pretty cool and definitely head turners. I've met a couple people who had/have zorses, no zonkies yet, and they do tend to be pretty wild. They weren't all that friendly and I wasn't too keen on the idea of riding it. One of them wasn't old enough to be broke and I'm not sure what happened to it. The other one I met, the owners gave up on and it's just pasture decor now. You could tell they weren't a normal horse that has been around humans, they acted like they were mustangs straight off the plains with very little work done.

The zonkies I've seen at the auctions seem much calmer, but they don't enjoy being pet/scratched like a normal donkey would. It's pretty questionable about whether or not the last one I saw was drugged. I used to be pretty good at pointing out the drugged horses, but the dirty horse traders learned a new trick....drain a bunch of blood out of the horse and it will be calm. I wasn't about to touch the zonkey's mouth and try to look at its' gums though....

It has to do with chromosome counts. Some hybrids are a sterile when the counts between species don't match up properly. Other problems can also arise--the Liger has a genetic issue that causes it to grow to enormous size, while the Tigon does not. They're both lion/tiger hybrids, the difference is in which gender parent is the tiger, and which the lion. (Liger = Lion X Tigress, and Tigon = Tiger X Lioness).

However, NOT all hybrids are sterile. That issue can actually be quite complex. Male Ligers and tigons are sterile, but females are NOT--they cannot be bred to each other, but they ARE fertile when bred to either parent species, producing ti-tigons, ti-ligers, li-ligons, or li-ligers.

Interestingly, the classic example of the infertile hybrid, the mule, is not ALWAYS so. While the males are indeed always infertile, there have been documentated cases of fertile female mules, and fertile female hinnies. It's simply quite rare.

In snakes, some surprising and unlikely combinations have proven to be fertile as well. (Corn X Kingsnake crosses). These are particularly astonishing because they don't just cross species lines--they actually cross GENUS lines.

More shocking still, guinea fowl have been hybridized with domestic chickens. In spite of the superficial similarities in appearance and size, these birds are not even in the same FAMILY. To put this into perspective--that would be like crossing a white-tailed deer with a giraffe. To date, no intra-Order hybrids have been identified.

It makes all of those creepy stories about crossing humans with gorillas or chimps a lot more plausible, when you dwell on it. There's no real reason why not....they're certainly a lot more closely related to us than a guinea fowl is to a chicken.

Many other hybrids may also be fertile. Coydogs are fertile, though their fertility seems to be lower in successive generations. (Wolfdogs actually aren't hybrids at all, as it turns out).

It's now known that hybridization is just another one of the tools in evolution's toolbox--it occurs naturally when environmental conditions put compatible animals in close proximity, and one or both have difficulty finding mates of their own species (for example). The polar bears, forced inland to find food due to the shrinking polar ice caps, have been hybridizing with grizzly bears, producing hybrid animals dubbed 'grolers'. This is a natural event caused by climate change, and it's entirely possible that when the polar habitat is no longer suitable for polar bears, they will simply meld back into the grizzly bear population that they originally evolved from, creating a new species that is more similar to the grizzly. Grolers are apparently fertile.

So, far from being a dead end, hybrids are absolutely fascinating bundles of potential.