Hello everyone! My name is Frédérique, I am a wildlife artist / natural history illustrator from the Netherlands. I'm working on a project that will feature all known or suspected odontocete hybrids. I have been going through the literature for a while now but also realise that many odd dolphins and intriguing sightings never make it into official publications.
If you have any photo(s) of (suspected) hybrids, or other odd dolphins, I would be VERY interested in seeing them. More specifically, some confirmed hybrids I'd be love to see are the Short-finned (Globicephala macrorhynchus) x Long-finned pilot whale (G. melas) intermediates of Spain, Whitebelly spinner dolphins (Stenella l. longirostris x S. l. orientalis), and Atlantic spotted (Stenella frontalis) x Common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) hybrids. Herzing et al. (2003) had a photo of a possible hybrid frontalis x truncatus calf, but I couldn't find anything else. Also, apparently there might be Short-beaked common x Dusky dolphin hybrids off New Zealand, would anyone know more about that/have images of individuals like that? Photos will only be used as reference for my illustration work, and not redistributed anywhere else. Plus, thanks will be duly given with the final result. My research also landed me with some questions, which I'd be very grateful to gain some insight into: - A Beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) x Narwhal (Monodon monoceros) hybrid was described off a single anomalous skull, has anything like it ever been seen again in the flesh, dead or alive? - Reyes (1996) wrote of a possible Dusky (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens) x Common dolphin (Delphinus sp.) hybrid from Peru. Has anything like that ever been seen again? The original account does include a little physical description but post-mortem darkening obscured most colouration details. - There are multiple references to captive Short-beaked common (D. delphis) x Common bottlenose dolphin (T. truncatus) hybrids. Are these just outdated references to C.J. and Bullet (Long-beaked common dolphin hybrids) or did this really happen? - Have any Humpback dolphin (Sousa sp.) x Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops sp.) hybrids been observed? I know there have been reports of sexual interactions between the two genera, and that one humpback dolphin was seen tending to a bottlenose-like calf, but nothing more. There's also some articles I've been trying very hard to find, but without success so far. - Antrim, J. E., Cornell, L. H. 1981. Globicephala-Tursiops hybrid. In: Abstracts of the Fourth Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals (San Francisco), p. 4. (I have not been able to get better descriptions of this hybrid than 'intermediate between the two species' which is a bit of a no brainer. Hoping this might help.) - Duffield, D. A. 1999. Examples of captive hybridisation and a genetic point of view. European Research on Cetaceans, 12: 421-422. - Simoes-Lopes, P.C., Tames, D.R., and Ximenez, A. 1994. Um novo caso de especimes intermediarios entre Tursiops e Steno? If anyone has any other hybrid pictures/knowledge/scuttlebud, please let me know. You can contact me at namutheorca(at)hotmail(dot)com. Thanks everybody so much in advance! Cheers, Frédérique Lucas
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