#hybridization

Since you’re a goose enjoyer I thought you might like this!! This fella’s been coming back to the area around my workplace for a few years (I only just managed to get good pictures of him for the first time today). My running theory is that he’s a Canadian goose/domestic goose hybrid based off his unique coloration and the fact that he’s a good bit larger than the other geese in his flock. He tried to square up with a car today I hope he lives forever 💖💖💖

What a cool bird! Love seeing him next to the normal Canada geese what a beefcake lmao. This ask led me to a very interesting iNaturalist article about hybridization in geese; thank you for sharing your unique neighbor!

My contributor’s copy of Xenobacillus glossophagii. It's an incursion into the microbial mechanics of language, trauma, and subjectivity by Kenji Siratori. In this treatise, Siratori [@xenopoem] conjures a parasite that infiltrates the architecture of language itself, rewriting syntax, meaning, and subjectivity in recursive waves of glossophagic spirals and semiotic collapse. Splicing glitch aesthetics, bacteriological theory, and philosophical speculation, Siratori spins a machinic delirium where words are wounds and language becomes a site of infection. For readers of Artaud, Serres, Haraway, and Wittgenstein, Xenobacillus glossophagii is biolinguistic horror at its most intimate and systemic.

Closing the volume is my xenopoetic afterword, Hybrid Futures: Human Adaptation in Symbiotic Ecosystems, which reframes contagion within an ecological and technobiotic paradigm. I propose a planetary-scale hybridization where humans co-evolve with both living and nonliving systems. Through the lens of "least-interaction boundaries" and other conceptual frameworks from my Alien Botany system, I envision a post-anthropocentric biopolitics, one where species merge not through conquest but through semiotic resonance and emergent complexity.

Cover art: Lenticus Somnium Remix by me. Inside: a path to a soundtrack merging my voice with Siratori’s noise.

Xenobacillus glossophagii is a mutagenic manifesto for the end of stable identities and a vector for cognitive recombination. 

That’s definitely a tricky topic to think about and one you might get different answers on. For instance me personally, I don’t think the blos wyverns can hybridize, but I do think radobaan and uragaan can. All the felynes probably can reproduce. Humans and wyverians maybe not since humans are apes and I think wyverians are cursorial monkeys.

Hybridization is just a very difficult thing to track in nature and in captivity, because sometimes the animals that can successfully hybridize may surprise you, and even things not in the same genus can hybridize.

For instance, songbirds hybridize all the time. A female bottlenose dolphin and male false killer whale can successfully reproduce and create something called a wholphin, which can also reproduce with other bottlenose dolphins.

Excerpt from this story from Popular Science:

If you happen to find yourself in south Texas and spot a strikingly colored bird, be sure to snap a photo. According to biologists at the University of Texas at Austin, it may be a mix between a green jay (Cyanocorax yncas) and a blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata). Unofficially dubbed a “grue jay,” the bird likely marks one of the first confirmed examples of a vertebrate animal that hybridized partially due to climate change.

This tale of two jays began around 7 million years ago, when both species split off from their ancestors on their own evolutionary paths. Green jays are tropical birds native to Central America whose range previously extended about as far as the United States-Mexico border. By comparison, their blue jay cousins are known to generally prefer the more temperate environments of the eastern US, and rarely fly further west than Houston, Texas.

Although the two species haven’t interacted for millions of years, climate change’s influence on average temperatures in the region is forcing a reunion. Environmental scientists have documented green jays migrating further north and blue jays moving west. The birds can be now found commingling around the San Antonio area—and have the offspring to prove it.

The tip-off came from a grainy photo posted online. UT Austin ecologist and green jay researcher Brian Stokes often relies on hobbyist birding online communities for directions and tips for his work. In May 2023, Stokes noticed an unfamiliar bird with a white chest and black mask in a picture uploaded to the Facebook group “TEXBIRDERS.” Although it somewhat resembled a blue jay, he knew it must be something else. A few weeks later, Stokes was in the birder’s suburban San Antonio backyard trying to find the mystery creature.

“The first day, we tried to catch it, but it was really uncooperative,” Stokes recounted in a statement. “But the second day, we got lucky.”

After ensnaring the bird in what’s known as a mist net—a rectangular crosstitching of black nylon threads tied between two poles—Stokes quickly collected a blood sample, banded its leg for future identification, and released it. From there, he and colleagues conducted a genetic analysis to confirm the bird’s identity. Their results published on September 10 in the journal Ecology and Evolution confirm the first hybrid grue jay ever seen in the wild.

Researchers have documented numerous examples of animal hybrids in the wild. These events often follow the introduction of an invasive species. Other cases—such as previously described polar-grizzly bear mixes—can happen after one species’ range expands into the other’s.

Because after 7 million years, the Blue Jay's and Green Jay's habitats have started overlapping due to human development and climate change.

And they made an ugly hybrid baby.

This matters because a) that shouldn't work. b) their habitats have only been overlapping for like twentyish years.

Red Fox!Trevor

Once again, the lovely @blodsten inspired this, having brought up the idea and sending me this picture <333

I had so much fun with the ear, but (seeing as I'm still so new to doing this sort of thing) I forgot to write down how I altered the colours, so ignore how the tail doesn't exactly matchy-match up. I also used different colour drops of separate pictures, so that's also mucked it a bit, lmao. And I added the anime anger thing for some zest, since I gave Nessa vines and flowers growing all over her. And finally, if you look closely enough, you can see that I gave Trev fox eyes and pupils :D

Bonus:: with references under the cut!