Some time ago, the media reported the news that Jingzhou was "the world's only tiger, lion, tiger and beast baby full of 100 days", which led to a crusade, on the grounds that there was no scientific research significance, which was not conducive to animal welfare and so on. However, humans are never soft on other animals, and even we often have hybrid animals on the table, especially fish, to name a few.
Figure (1) Construction crucian carp
Figure (2) Construction crucian carp
1. Engineering crucian carp. Among the evil carps, crucian carp is a clear stream, delicious, but large and too small; carp is strong, but the flesh is not good, the earthy smell is heavy, so that carp and crucian carp hybridize to produce engineered crucian carp, can have the strengths of both. And the engineered crucian carp has no reproductive ability, no genetic pollution worries, and the good is also good. The engineered crucian carp in Figure (2) happens to carry the gene of the mirror carp, that is, the "three scales", so the appearance is a bit strange.
Figure (3) Western sturgeon
2. Hybrid sturgeon. There is a difference between "large miscellaneous (also called hybrid sturgeon)" and "western miscellaneous", western sturgeon is a hybrid of Siberian sturgeon and Shi's sturgeon, the popularity rate is high, a variety of supermarket aquatic product cabinets and restaurants may have, generally will be "Chinese sturgeon" as a pretext to attract customers. However, the Chinese sturgeon is a national key protected animal, and it is not allowed to eat it idlely, and the folk "Chinese sturgeon" are all hybrid sturgeon or Shi's sturgeon impersonation. The meat is coarser, less thorny, and the taste is general, which satisfies the curiosity of some people. Hybridization of sturgeon is easy, and Russian sturgeon and spoon sturgeon can even be cross-family.
Figure (4) Hybrid snakehead
3. Hybrid fish. Traditional snakehead culture is mainly fed chilled fish, which is easy to cause environmental pollution and has a high cost, while hybrid snakeheads obtained with snakehead as the father of the spotted snakehead as the mother have the advantages of fast growth rate and can eat artificial compound feed after domestication, and have basically replaced snakehead culture in the Pearl River Delta region. Even in restaurants in Qingdao, the fish you can see are all hybrids.
Fig. (5) Hybridized bream
4. Hybrid bream. The hybrid offspring of the tuantou bream and the cockroach are more complicated and not mentioned. Tuantou bream is a well-known Wuchang fish, and the puffed-beaked bream is not an idle person, that is, "Yangtze River white fish" is also, both of which are famous edible fish. Hybrid bream inherited the herbivorousness of Tuantou bream (feed saves money), intermuscular spines were 7.7% less than those of Tuanzun bream, and the average weight of 1-year-old fish was more than 20.0% higher than that of Tuantou bream and Quympan, which combined the strengths of both and the quality was further improved.
Fig. (6) Oni tilapia
5. Oni tilapia. The offspring obtained by hybridizing the father with the Nile tilapia as the mother, named Oni, is named slightly arbitrary, but it is also stronger than using the word "hybridization" directly. The main advantage is to grow faster, the growth rate is 17-72% faster than the parent fish, 11-24% faster than the mother fish, the cold resistance and meat yield are slightly higher than the father and mother, the most prominent advantage is the high male rate, reaching 83-100%, the average is more than 92%, which is extremely beneficial to improving individual size and group yield. p.s. Hybrid tilapia is more than this one, the rest is slightly.
Fig. (7) Pocket catfish, no reliable photo of the hybrid catfish was found
6. Hybrid catfish. It is used to cross southern catfish and ordinary catfish, and there are also crossed with pregnant catfish and ordinary catfish, the latter as an example. This hybrid catfish is developed by Heilongjiang Province, the advantages are also a lot, what growth rate, good meat quality, strong disease resistance, low temperature resistance, hypoxia resistance, etc., this is also the purpose of hybrid breeding, otherwise why go around such a big circle? However, the reputation of catfish does not seem to be very good, many people associate it with dirty water garbage, in fact, it is also a misunderstanding, I quite like to eat catfish. Point to the end, do not expand on.
Figure (8) Pearl Dragon Bar
Figure (9) Dragon rat spots
7. Hybrid grouper. Interspecific hybridization is a common channel for grouper breeding, such as pearl dragon pod (saddle band grouper× brown spot grouper), dragon tiger grouper (saddle band grouper× brown spotted grouper) and green dragon spot (oblique band grouper× saddle band grouper), etc., while "dragon rat spot" is a cross-genus hybrid, more special. Dragon rat spot is a hybrid of female humpback perch and male saddle band grouper, the former is the only species in the genus Humpback perch, commonly known as rat spot, while the latter is the world's largest grouper fish, commonly known as dragon pod, combined into one is "dragon rat spot".
These are just a few of the hybrids in farmed fish. Fish hybridization is much easier than mammals, cross-genus, cross-family and even cross-order hybridization, some distant hybridization can also get fertile offspring, so it is widely used in production practice. In addition to edible fish, hybrids in ornamental fish are emerging in an endless stream and are commonplace. Species boundaries are nothing in the face of human needs.