r/Cetacea • u/xSpartau • Sep 07 '24
All Known Whale Hybrids?
Ones I already know of:
- Blue x Fin whale
- Blue x humpback
- Antarctic x common minke
Looking for more if there is any, thanks!
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u/kimprobable Sep 08 '24
Northern right whale x bowhead and gray x humpback (neither generically confirmed)
There are also a ton of dolphin hybrids, but a large number of them are due to being held together in captivity. The one I find most interesting in the wild is a southern right whale dolphin x dusky cross.
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u/xSpartau Sep 08 '24
Oh sick, is there any images of the gray x humpback or bowhead x right whale?
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u/kimprobable Sep 08 '24
A picture of the bowhead/right whale in the Bering Sea was taken by David E. Withrow in 2009, but I can't find it online or evidence of it in a publication, only mention of it in several articles about Arctic ice melt. I'm asking some people who might know of one, though.
The gray x humpback was mentioned in an article which said there was no picture, only a mention in an article, but I checked their cited source and it doesn't mention it either. They give the wrong page numbers for their citation as well, so I'm guessing they linked to the wrong article by accident.
A genetic study from 2021 with 74 gray whales (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zUbgu0UsiJQ0xMiMb3Vdb3beMPt8FnhS/view) said they found no evidence of hybridization.
So maybe that one can be chalked up to a possibility but I guess there isn't any good data at this time.
And as an aside, I also learned while digging around that harbor and Dall's porpoises (and I would guess other porpoises too, but those are the two species that were looked at) are more closely related to belugas/narwhals than any members of the dolphin family.
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u/monkeyman68 Sep 08 '24
Beluga and narwhal