Wild mountain zebras have 16 pairs of chromosomes, ...
That's quite a difference eh?
Compared to the other species it looks like polyploidy or something similar occurred at some point between WMZebras and other equines.
Zebroid - Wikipedia
quote:
A donkey has 62 chromosomes; the zebra has between 44 and 62 (depending on species). In spite of this difference, viable hybrids are possible provided the gene combination in the hybrid allows for embryonic development to birth. A hybrid has a number of chromosomes somewhere in between. The chromosome difference makes female hybrids poorly fertile and male hybrids sterile due to a phenomenon called Haldane's Rule. The difference in chromosome number is most likely due to horses having 2 longer chromosomes that contain similar gene content that contain the same genes as 4 zebra chromosomes.
So are there hybrids between the different zebra species? Are they fertile?
Seems to me that when there are fused chromosomes in some species closely related to others without the fusion, that they could - occasionally - have both of the non-fused versions match up to the one fused one in hybrids.
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