Hybrid Cuban-American Crocodiles on the RiseRare Cuban species in danger of being bred out of existence.
There's a new Cuban crisis—the island country's rare crocodile is being loved to death by its American cousin... Mating Cuban crocodiles and American crocodiles are creating hybrid offspring that threaten the survival of the Cuban species, which has dwindled to about 4,000 wild animals in two isolated Cuban swamps. The ten-foot-long (three-meter-long) reptile is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
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Surprisingly, the results showed that American crocodiles living in Cuba are more closely related to Cuban crocodiles than to other American crocodile populations in Central America. This suggests that the American and Cuban species are mating much more than thought. When different species mate to create hybrids, genes mix, and eventually one lineage can cause the extinction of the other....
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