How come alligators and crocodiles can’t make viable offspring? Isn’t the only difference between the two the snout?
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First thing, that in biology if something looks similar, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are close *enough* to hybridize. Sometimes the *seemingly close* is not close enough. Partially because how we decide what is close, is based on superficial traits: shape, size, color etc. In biology, the internal structure is much more important. But you can’t see that from the outside.
Second thing is that snout difference is not the only difference. Snout shape is a *discriminative feature*. It means that it’s something easy to see, easy to learn, easy to teach to children etc. There are many more hard to see differences.
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