Posted on 05/11/2006 6:57:25 AM PDT by VadeRetro
IQALUIT, Nunavut - Northern hunters, scientists and people with vivid imaginations have discussed the possibility for years.
But Roger Kuptana, an Inuvialuit guide from Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories, was the first to suspect it had actually happened when he proposed that a strange-looking bear shot last month by an American sports hunter might be half polar bear, half grizzly.
Territorial officials seized the creature after noticing its white fur was scattered with brown patches and that it had the long claws and humped back of a grizzly. Now a DNA test has confirmed that it is indeed a hybrid - possibly the first documented in the wild.
"We've known it's possible, but actually most of us never thought it would happen," said Ian Stirling, a polar bear biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Edmonton.
Polar bears and grizzlies have been successfully paired in zoos before - Stirling could not speculate why - and their offspring are fertile.
Breeding seasons for the two species overlap, though polar bear gets started slightly earlier.
Most deer hunters do.
but just to kill something for fun?
Whatever the motivation, if somebody wasn't shooting deer we'd be up to our necks in them here. (We're already up to our asses).
I think the "militant, obstinate, amnesia" goes hand-in-hand with the earlier characteristics cited.
Do all that stuff you said but don't shoot the deer. If the fun is gone, then you were just killing thing for the fun of it.
That's a phallic problem.
I guess I just like killing stuff and eating it.... Like I said, that's what makes this country great. I can live and survive in nature if I have too, you can read about it. I respect you for not killing something you don't want to eat or enjoy tracking and shooting. You shouldn't if you don't want to.
If anyone's up to his nostrils and sinking, it's the creationists.
I notice you didn't even attempt to deal with my second set of quotes.
I notice you have declined to deal with the dishonesty of your first set. Darwin's hunch was right. He didn't say whales for sure came from bears, only that some such scenario had likely happened. It had. Rather than deal with that, you attempt to obscure it.
Darwin would be considered a racist today, yes. He was one of the least racist men of his time. It would be irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of his theory, however, if he barbecued babies. So your two arguments together amount to seriously misrepresenting a successful prediction and an irrelevancy.
Let's go back to that first argument you don't like to talk about. Other successful predictions Darwin made include the finding of Precambrian life in general, trilobite precursors in particular, and the existence of a particularly long-tongued Madagascar hawk-moth. If he was a charlatan, he was the luckiest man ever with a really wrong theory. One hundred fifty years later, only a cult of witch doctor idiots knows how wrong he was, and that not from the evidence but only by ignoring the evidence.
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20060511/4462b6c0_3ca6_1552620060511-658188363
The hunter will probably get his bear back. There may be other hybrids out there. More details on what happened.
No hate crime there.
I'm not particularly surprised; the mitochondria only come from the mother, maybe that's how they determined it.
Or a Y chromosome marker.
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