[juanbenae]

I wonder if somebody had it as a pet and it escaped? I know people will let reptiles and other non native species loose when they get too much to keep, but you'd think that type of critter would be easy to rehome if you wanted to give it up.

I watched a youtube short recently about how due to shrinking polar ice that grizzles are moving further north and mating with polar bears. One hybrid was taken by a hunter in Canada thinking it was a brown bear, but upon getting up on the kill it was obviously not a grizzly. He reached out to the game department who took sample of it confirming it to be a hybrid. The video was very interesting in that grizzles can hunt and forage on land, whereas the polar bear cannot as they are strictly carnivores and not adapted to hunt on land effectively. It was noted that like many hybrids they did not have a matching number of chromosomes, so they likely were not able to breed. They touched on Coywolves being able to breed do to the matching chromosomes count. They suggested that they expect this to be occurring more often as the species are becoming more likely to share territory as the ice goes away.

I wonder if that cat could interbreed with bobcats?