Jim Martell

个人简介

A grizzly–polar-bear hybrid (also named grolar bear, pizzly bear, zebra bear, grizzlar, or nanulak) is a rare ursid hybrid that has occurred both in captivity and in the wild. In 2006, the occurrence of this hybrid in nature was confirmed by testing the DNA of a unique-looking bear who had been shot near Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories, on Banks Island in the Canadian Arctic. The number of confirmed hybrids has since risen to eight, all of them descending from the same female polar bear. Possible wild-bred polar bear–grizzly bear hybrids have been reported and shot in the past, but DNA tests were not available to verify the bears' ancestry. Genetic analysis has revealed multiple instances of introgressive hybridization between bear species, including introgression of polar bear DNA into brown bears during the Pleistocene ("grizzly bear" is a local common name for Ursus arctos whereas "brown bear" is used internationally and in science to refer to the species as a whole).