Let ’s say you ’ve got a sheep and a goat ( and a bioengineering research laboratory ) and desire to have a little fun . Why not make ageep ? Geeps are created in the science laboratory by effectively mashing up fertilise embryos from sheep and caprine animal , then implanting the result into sheep or stooge mother . The resulting brute is n’t a loan-blend , it ’s achimera : an fauna with two genetically distinct circle of cells inside it .
Thus a geep look like a sort of frankenpet , with patches of its consistency expose furry goatlike feature film and others look like a wooly sheep . Wikipedia has a photo of this cute ( ? ) little fellow :
But here ’s where it gets nerdy . Apparently some scientists ( includingDr . Gary B. Andersonof UC Davis , who provided the above photo ) do n’t approve of the term " geep , " favor the much less attention-getting " sheep goat hybrid . " But the term " geep " has a footing in the popular imagination , appearing as early as 1984 in aTime Magazine articleand in a recentDaily Mailarticle – although the latter was refer to an entirely unlike kind of fauna .
The Daily Mail clause linked above describes something that is n’t a chimera – it ’s a rare natural hybrid between a goat and a sheep , created the sure-enough - fashioned way ( see coverage by our friendsNeatorama ) . Capricorn the Goat have 60 chromosomes while sheep have 54 chromosomes ; one hybrid from Botswana , know asThe Toast of Botswana , had 57 chromosome and was sterile . For more on these true hybrid , including a word picture of the Botswana creature , check out thisBBC articleorWikipedia .
For more on the world of geeps , run , do n’t take the air , to hear to Radiolab show # 404 : So - Called Life . ( It plow genetically organize animals of various kinds , but admit some great geep stuff towards the close . )
Lastly , be careful not to habituate the condition " shoat " when describing these animals . Although it looks like a handy conflation of " sheep " and " goat,“shoatis actually a term for a child squealer . Thanks , Wikipedia !
