Bottlenose dolphins can mate with whales and give birth to healthy offspring because they share 44 chromosomes.
Kekaimalu on his 30th birthday in 2015. Photo: Kyle Kittleson
“Wholphin” is the nickname given to the hybrid species that results from the rare union of different marine mammals, most commonly the bottlenose dolphin and the goby. However, this is not the only example of interspecies mating recorded in the ocean world , according to IFL Science .
The first wholphin was born at Tokyo SeaWorld in 1981, but died after just 200 days. In 1985, another female hybrid named Kekaimalu was born from an "unusual" bond between a male wholphin named I`anui and a female Atlantic bottlenose dolphin named Punahele.
“The trainers were suspicious as soon as they saw the calf. It was darker than the other dolphins and its nose looked like it had been cut off,” said John Blanchard, a trainer at Tokyo SeaWorld. Wholphins are not actually a dolphin-whale hybrid, as the whales belong to the dolphin family. However, they are members of two separate species, making Kekaimalu an example of a true hybrid.
The birth of a cetacean hybrid is particularly surprising given the size difference between the two parent species. Bottlenose dolphins typically grow to 2 meters in length, while male narwhals can grow to over 5 meters. Clearly, creating a hybrid requires impressive physical strength. Researchers have previously documented numerous instances of bottlenose dolphins and narwhals frolicking and foraging together in the wild.
According to researchers, if two species are relatively closely related and share the same number of chromosomes, they can sometimes interbreed and produce healthy offspring. For example, dogs and wolves both have 78 chromosomes arranged in 39 pairs, allowing them to interbreed with little effect. The same is true for bottlenose dolphins and gorillas, which both have 44 chromosomes. In the case of Kekaimalu, it reproduced normally, mating with at least two male bottlenose dolphins and producing three calves.
In addition to the Kekaimalu, scientists have also documented a number of hybrids born from different marine animals, including whales, dolphins, and porpoises. In 2018, researchers discovered a new species of dolphin hybrid in Hawaiian waters, believed to be the offspring of a rough-toothed dolphin and a melon-headed dolphin. In 2019, another team of scientists from the Natural History Museum of Denmark studied a whale skull found on the roof of an Inuit tool shed in Disko Bay, western Greenland. Genetic analysis revealed that the specimen was 54% beluga and 46% narwhal. They concluded that it was a hybrid of the two species, called a narluga.
An Khang (According to IFL Science )
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