Dog × Parrot

Mammalian Hybrids

EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD GENETICS, ΦΒΚ

Home

Donations

How many things are judged impossible before they actually occur?

—Pliny
Natural History, 7:1

Note: Any claim that hybrids can be produced from this highly disparate and very poorly documented cross would require confirmation from a specimen or from controlled breeding experiments.

In a brief article entitled “On a Dog Formed Like a Parrot,” which appeared in Recueil Périodique d’Observations de Médecine, a French medical journal, Maréchal (1757, p. 231) describes an alleged dog-parrot hybrid. But such a cross would, of course, be extremely disparate, and no other such hybrid seems to have been reported anywhere in the literature. Moreover, Maréchal gives few details. He does not even specify the type of parrot in question, or the type of dog. Nor was a specimen preserved, or even pictured. So this cross is very poorly attested.

The report, in English translation, reads as follows: “My father has at his home a parrot and a small dog, a bitch. The latter

gave birth to an attractive first litter. But the second time round she whelped a strange pup. This animal has only two feet, the hind ones, which are webbed. The head is flat, and the upper lip, cleft. The nose is curved and of the same consistency^† as the beak of a parrot. It completely covers the lips, and a concave groove extends from its tip along its length. The lower jaw is exactly like that of a parrot. It was stillborn, and I opened it up. It had neither bladder nor penis, and therefore could not urinate.^‡ With the exception of the features just mentioned, it was [for a dog] of ordinary structure. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original French]

† i.e., composed of horn.

‡ Nearly all birds, including parrots, lack both bladder and penis, and instead have a cloaca, but they can, of course, urinate. Platypuses and echidnas, which are both likely bird-mammal hybrids, also have cloacas. Birds that do have penises include the ostrich and the various anatid waterfowl.

A list of dog crosses

The following is a list of reported dog crosses discussed on this site. Some of these crosses are much better documented than others (as indicated by the reliability arrow). Moreover, some are extremely disparate, and so must be taken with a large grain of salt. But all have been reported at least once.