'Mystery monkey' spotted in a Borneo forest could be a rare hybrid of two different species, new study says

[Potoooooooo]

'Mystery monkey' spotted in a Borneo forest could be a rare hybrid of two different species, new study says

An unidentified "mystery monkey" spotted in a Borneo forest could be a rare hybrid of a proboscis monkey and a silvery langur, a new study says.

www.yahoo.com

• An unidentified "mystery monkey"could be a rare hybrid of two different species, a new study says.
• Interbreeding between distantly related species is "rarely observed in the wild," according to the study.
• The hybrid monkey could be an "alarming symptom" of an ecosystem out of balance, the study co-author said.

An unidentified "mystery monkey" seen in Borneo could be a rare hybrid of two different species, according to a study published in the International Journal of Primatology.

The mysterious primate spotted near the Kinabatangan River in Malaysian Borneo, is likely to be the offspring of a proboscis monkey and a silvery langur – two species that inhabit the same forest and are distantly related, researchers said.

While closely related species occasionally interbreed to create hybrids, hybridization between distantly related species is "rarely observed in the wild," according to the study.

 

[steve_bank]

Interesting, I watched a show on a seal manatee hybrid people in Florida claim to have seen.

I am still banking on the Loch Ness Monster.

 

[Elixir]

Interesting, I watched a show on a seal manatee hybrid people in Florida claim to have seen.

I hope you didn't watch the whole thing. Seals are rather distant from manatees; seals are related to terrestrial bears and mustelids, and manatees' closest terrestrial relatives are elephants.
This would be like seeing a bobcat/raccoon hybrid.

 

[steve_bank]

Interesting, I watched a show on a seal manatee hybrid people in Florida claim to have seen.

I hope you didn't watch the whole thing. Seals are rather distant from manatees; seals are related to terrestrial bears and mustelids, and manatees' closest terrestrial relatives are elephants.
This would be like seeing a bobcat/raccoon hybrid.

Seals and manatees can not mate. Alleged hybrids are part of ongoing TV shows.

It comes under the heading of cryptozoology.

Cryptozoology - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that searches for and studies unknown, legendary, or extinct animals whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated,[1] particularly those popular in folklore, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, the chupacabra, the Jersey Devil, or the Mokele-mbembe. Cryptozoologists refer to these entities as cryptids, a term coined by the subculture. Because it does not follow the scientific method, cryptozoology is considered a pseudoscience by mainstream science: it is neither a branch of zoology nor of folklore studies. It was originally founded in the 1950s by zoologists Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson.

Scholars have noted that the subculture rejected mainstream approaches from an early date, and that adherents often express hostility to mainstream science. Scholars have studied cryptozoologists and their influence (including the pseudoscience's association with Young Earth creationism), noted parallels in cryptozoology and other pseudosciences such as ghost hunting and ufology, and highlighted uncritical media propagation of cryptozoologist claims.

 

[Potoooooooo]

It is a lot less impressive looking than either of it's parents

 

[Swammerdami]

Interesting, I watched a show on a seal manatee hybrid people in Florida claim to have seen.

I hope you didn't watch the whole thing. Seals are rather distant from manatees; seals are related to terrestrial bears and mustelids, and manatees' closest terrestrial relatives are elephants.
This would be like seeing a bobcat/raccoon hybrid.

From the taxonomic trivia desk:

The mnemonic King Philip Came Over For Good Spaghetti describes seven taxonomic grades, but pedants have over 100 intermediate grades! For example, in between Class and Order no less than 23 intermediate grades are in use: Class, Subclass, Infraclass, Parvclass, Division, Subdivision, Section, Subsection, Group, Subgroup, Superlegion, Legion, Sublegion, Infralegion, Supercohort, Cohort, Subcohort, Magnorder, Superorder, Series, Subseries, Grandorder, Mirorder, Order.

The Silvery Langur (or Lutung) and Proboscis Monkey (Long-Nosed Monkey) are in the same Subfamily — Colobinae (Leaf-eating Monkeys) — but that Subfamily has about ten extant genera divided into three genus groups, and the two species are in different genus groups.

Hybrids of different genera in the same subfamily are rare and usually infertile. Sheep-Goat is a classic example:

At the Botswana Ministry of Agriculture in 2000, a male sheep impregnated a female goat resulting in a live male offspring. This hybrid had 57 chromosomes, intermediate between sheep (54) and goats (60) and was intermediate between the two parent species in type. It had a coarse outer coat, a woolly inner coat, long goat-like legs and a heavy sheep-like body. Although infertile, the hybrid had a very active libido, mounting both ewes and does even when they were not in heat. He was castrated when he was 10 months old, as were the other kids and lambs in the herd.

A male sheep impregnated a female goat in New Zealand resulting in a mixed litter of kids and a female sheep–goat hybrid with 57 chromosomes. The hybrid was subsequently shown to be fertile when mated with a ram.

Chicken-Guineafowl hybrids are often cited as interbreeding between different families (though they are in the same Superfamily). I suppose different parts of the Tree of Life have different relationships between taxonomic grading and genetic distance.

Manatees and Seals, on the other hand, are in different Orders: As Elixir states, Manatees are in Order Sirenea, sibling to Order Proboscidea (elephants), while Seals are closely related to bears and wolves which, with Cats, form Order Carnivora. Sirenea and Carnivora are in different Legions (see list above). The earliest division in placental mammals may have been between two groups associated with Gondwana and Laurasia supercontinents; these groups include Sirenea and Carnivora respectively.