This polar bear is mostly white. Image courtesy of Ansgar Walk, Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
In 2006 hunters shot a white bear that had brown patches in its fur. DNA tests indicated that the animal that had lived in the Arctic region was a hybrid, a descendant of a grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) and a polar bear (Ursus maritimus). Known as pizzly, prizzly or grolar bears, they are increasingly being spotted in the wild. Four years later, for instance, a hunter in Canada killed another of these hybrids.
Conservationists are afraid that polar bears might eventually die off as a distinct species if they keep on mating with grizzlies.
Although evolutionists are worried, we should not be surprised at the behaviour of bears and the ability of some species to get offspring with animals of another (although closely related) species. The existence of hybrids shows that the Genesis concept ‘kind’ differs considerably from, and is a wider concept than, the term species used in modern biology.
While the grizzly bear and the polar bear are distinct species, they belong to the same Genesis kind. Likewise, lions and tigers belong to the same biblical kind.
Source:
Kelly, Brendan, Andrew Whiteley and David Tallmon. 2010. The Artic Melting Pot. Nature 468 (7336): 891.
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