Geep

From Freepedia

A geep is a chimera produced by combining the embryos of a goat and a sheep; the resulting animal has cells of both sheep and goat origin. A geep should not be confused with a sheep-goat hybrid, which can result when a goat mates with a sheep. The first geep to be created artificially under laboratory conditions was born in 1987.

The only known true sheep-goat hybrid is the Toast of Batswana. Sheep and goats resemble each other and can be mated together, but any offspring conceived are generally stillborn due to chromosome mismatch. Sheep have 54 chromosomes. Goats have 60 chromosomes. At Botswana Ministry of Agriculture, a ram housed with a nanny goat impregnated the goat and a live offspring was produced. The hybrid was found to have 57 chromosomes and was called "The Toast of Batswana". It was intermediate in type between its parents: coarse outer coat, woolly inner coat, long goat-like legs and heavy sheep-like body. Although infertile, the hybrid had to be castrated because it continually mounted sheep and goats housed in the same enclosure.

In 1969, Australian farmer Dick Lanyon, near Melbourne, Australia, put a billy-goat among his sheep in order to scare off foxes during the lambing season. In September of that year he claimed to have dozens of ‘lambs’ which were half-sheep-half-goat, and more were arriving each day. The goat was locked up while scientists examined the supposed hybrids, but they were not confirmed as hybrids.

A further complication is that some primitive sheep may be misidentified as goats and the offspring between a primitive sheep and a domesticated sheep may be misidentified as inter-species hybrids.

In "Darwinism An Exposition Of The Theory Of Natural Selection With Some Of Its Applications" (1889), Alfred Russel Wallace wrote: '[...] the following statement of Mr. Low: "It has been long known to shepherds, though questioned by naturalists, that the progeny of the cross between the sheep and goat is fertile. Breeds of this mixed race are numerous in the north of Europe." Nothing appears to be known of such hybrids either in Scandinavia or in Italy; but Professor Giglioli of Florence has kindly given me some useful references to works in which they are described. The following extract from his letter is very interesting: "I need not tell you that there being such hybrids is now generally accepted as a fact. Buffon (Supplements, tom. iii. p. 7, 1756) obtained one such hybrid in 1751 and eight in 1752. Sanson (La Culture, vol. vi. p. 372, 1865) mentions a case observed in the Vosges, France. Geoff. St. Hilaire (Hist. Nat. Gén. des reg. org., vol. iii. p. 163) was the first to mention, I believe, that in different parts of South America the ram is more usually crossed with the she-goat than the sheep with the he-goat. The well-known 'pellones' of Chile are produced by the second and third generation of such hybrids (Gay, 'Hist, de Chile,' vol. i. p. 466, Agriculture, 1862). Hybrids bred from goat and sheep are called 'chabin' in French, and 'cabruno' in Spanish. In Chile such hybrids are called 'carneros lanudos'; their breeding inter se appears to be not always successful, and often the original cross has to be recommenced to obtain the proportion of three-eighths of he-goat and five-eighths of sheep, or of three-eighths of ram and five-eighths of she-goat; such being the reputed best hybrids."'

Hybrids have been reported between sheep and mouflon, a goat-like ancestor of the sheep.