The Earliest Man-made Animal Hybrids

Kungas from ancient Mesopotamia are the first known animal hybrids made by humans

Kunga-drawn chariots from the Standard of Ur. Image source: Wikimedia

Eva-Marie Geigl, a geneticist at the Institut Jacques Monod, Paris, made an unusual discovery while studying the bones of animals from a burial ground in Northern Syria. She had stumbled on what looked like equid bones. Equids are horse-like animals that include horses, mules, and donkeys.

The bones, however, did not resemble any known equid. Geigl’s team’s first thought was that it belonged to an extinct species known as the Syrian Wild Ass. But the bones were larger than that of a typical Syrian Wild Ass.

The Syrian Wild Ass was much bigger in the past. Over the years it shrunk in size. So the researchers looked at the bones of Syrian Wild Asses from 10,000 years ago to see if they were similar.

The results still didn’t match. The findings surprised the researchers. The bones were 4500 years old and belonged to an equid from ancient Mesopotamia. They had just uncovered the first known example of man-made animal hybri…