[HPforGrownups] Re: Weasley names- WW biology

[ksnidget at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 40720

The Random Monkey wrote: 

>So, if a veela and a human can have a baby, and the baby can have a 
>baby, than they must be the same species. So either Fleur Delacour is 
>sterile, or veela and humans are the same species.

Ah, but isn't Fleur 1/4 veela (IIRC "my grandmuzzer was a veela." )

So that implies that the F1 was fertile at least when backcrossed
against one of the parental types. (F1 first generation, or half
blood)

But is the F1 fertile with another F1?
Is the F1 fertile with either Parental type?

And then we have the problem of just what part of the animal/plant
kingdom are you looking at. That hybrids of two species do not survive/
reproduce rule works really well when you are talking mammals. Um...
how to put this tactfully...but as you go to other parts of animal/plant world
some things tend to be a bit more...um...promiscuous. One of my
fellow grad students was working on fish hybrids which were not
sterile. <OT comment.... poor guy had to spend one week out of 
every month out on a very nice lake camping and fishing...the horror>

>The same goes for giants and humans, but with an additional twist; 
>mechanical isolation. Yeah... Um... Me and my squeamish american 
>stomach don't like to think about that.

>So does anyone else have any thoughts? Maybe the fine people on the 
>Wizarding Genes thread?

Well there is always the "some spell makes it work" idea, which 
I don't like all that much.

Now there are cases where a small enough genetic change can occur
that the phenotype is greatly altered although the genetic structure is
about the same (The humans are really just neonatal chimpanzees
theory. Even worse than we evolved from them, we are just sexually
mature baby chimps, which actually might explain a lot come to think
of it <eg>) The large change in body form could be enough to, for the
most part, isolate the two populations. The you just don't look right
kinda thing. Homeotic mutations (like having a leg where your antenna
is supposed to be, or having too many segments) are well known to
produce big changes in what something looks like, so that could explain
how they seem so different, but really are just a sub-species of humans.

Or that pesky W allele may be able to play games of it's own which
allows hybrids to exist, and reproduce. Which strangely I like better than
you just cast a spell and it works.

KSnidget