“Sheep-Dog” Offspring Not Likely…
– – We all know that there are sheep and there are dogs as well as sheepdogs, of the Old English variety among others…but could a sheep and a dog produce an offspring?
Well, a farmer in western China’s Shaanxi province is claiming that such a miracle of nature happened, with the, umm, puppy-lamb having a white woolly coat with a mouth, nose, paws, and tail that look very similar to a dog’s features. Experts say, however, that the animal is just an abnormal lamb, or perhaps a fuzzy-furred young canid that was found born near sheep.– It’s also as cute as the dickens!
Sheep and dogs are of different species that diversified about 80 million years ago from a common ancestor, and they are in separate orders or taxonomic designations. They have been isolated genetically for so long that they differ greatly in their chromosome numbers. While hybrids can occur such as the ligers possible between lions and tigers, dogs and sheep are just too genetically different for an offspring to be biologically possible…
Tags: sheep-dog hybrid?
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FOXSYLVANIA 
April 10, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Looks more like a Bedlington terrier puppy posed near a full-grown sheep.
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April 11, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Yep, I think it’s a dog as well. Canines show quite a diversity of coat types, some of which are sheep-like…
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