Weasley names- WW biology

[random_monkey0_0]

No: HPFGUIDX 40721

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

Er, sorry. I was thinking of Ron exclaiming, "She's part veela!"

> 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. 

I didn't know about that, at least not with animals. We did discuss 
that plants can produce hybrids with all kinds of weird combos, but I 
don't remember much about it because I didn't do the homework. ;^_^

 
> 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 <snip> 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.

I didn't think of that... Yeah, giants could be very close to humans, 
or even human, and just be ostracized for their looks. They're a lot 
closer to humans appearance-wise than veela.

But that doesn't explain the veela too well, unless I'm just not 
understanding what you're saying.

wait a tic- I just found my bio notes on speciation, and there's 
another form of post-zygotic barrier- hybrid breakdown. The hybrid can 
produce offspring, but the offspring aren't viable or are sterile.

Maybe it's something like Star Trek: All the different species started 
out as one and diverged, and are therefore still identical enough to 
breed together. That's the lame excuse they used for all those 
klingon-human hybrids.

The Random Monkey, whose bio teacher could have avoided that running 
"steve's tube member" joke if she had only pronounced the word "sieve" 
right!