Re: Line breeding vs hybridization

In a message dated Mon, 25 Jun 2001 11:43:51 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Lewandjim@aol.com writes:

<< You misinterpret what I said. Linnaeus in his early taxonomic efforts treated 
some domestic hybrids as "species" - the dog is NOT a species but a hybrid of 
a mishmash of wolf subspecies plus ??? (who knows what)! It should not be 
given a binomial epithet under international rules.

Okay.  Next question -- how does one determine this?  Nowadays we have DNA analysis, but Linnaeus did not.  What about the Dingo and the New Guinea Whistling Dog, which are both wild descendants of domestic dogs?

The domestic pig is generally called Sus scrofa, like its postulated ancestor, the wild boar; but the domestic cow, Bos taurus, has a distinct name from its ancestor the aurochs (Bos primigenius).  Do genuinely wild Equus caballus exist?

Jason Hernandez
Naturalist-at-Large
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