To my 5 year old knowledge I thought Neanderthals were different species but for us to have part of their dna that means they got jiggy together and created fertile off spring with Homo sapiens but when a donkey and a horse do it they make infertile offspring? Are we not like actual separate species?
In: Biology
The way you are taught “what is a species” in school is a gross simplification
In nature, organisms do not adhere to strict rules. The high school level 1 biology class definition of a species is sorta accurate for many animals, but there are many many exceptions. There are genuses that produce infertile hybrids, sure, but there’s also things like “ring species” where geographically-adjacent species can each interbreed with their neighbor, but *not* the neighbor of their neighbor. And there are species in the process of diverging so there may be different populations that are becoming different sub-species
Humans and Neanderthals have a lot of differences, but those differences did not extend to differences in reproduction.
Latest Answers