In the far north, global warming is making for some strange den-fellows, according to a Washington Post article that appeared last week.
The Post article, titled "Love in the Time of Climate Change, details the hybridization now occurring between polar bears and grizzly bears.
While habitat for grizzlies is increasing due to retreating glaciers and thawing permafrost, it's the opposite for polar bears, who need sea ice to feed on seals and walruses, but are now spending more time on land than ever, due to melting ice packs.
As grizzly males range into the once-frozen habitat to expand their territory, they sometimes practice what is scientifically known as "flexible mate choice," in which the bears are mating with the best possible available partners of a close-enough species, as a last resort to not mating at all.
It's the ursine equivalent of what bar-dwelling human males have long known as "2 a.m."
The Arctic encounters between grizzly and polar bears have produced hybrid offspring known as either "pizzlies" or "grolar" bears. They are not alone when it comes to the forces of nature enabling the cross-breeding of north woods species.
Along North America's North Atlantic coast, coyotes, dogs and wolves have crossbred to produce coywolves, while a lynx-bobcat blend that so far lacks a nickname has also been observed. Narwhals and belugas, both members of a branch of the whale family, have crossbred to produce narlugas, and scientists in Ontario have been studying the crossbreeding of northern and southern flying squirrels, as the southern species begins to range north of the Canadian border. Scientists have also verified several instances of seal species hybridization in northern waters.
If the trend continues, as it is expected to, I wonder if we'll see even less selective crossbreeding taking place, like caribou and moose hooking up to produce carimoo, or beavers and otters sharing alone time together in their dens to propagate beaters.
Here in West Virginia, three species of threatened and endangered bats could eventually crossbreed to create Northern Virginia Indiana big-eared, long-eared bats, and snowshoe hares and cottontail rabbits could interbreed to produce cottonshoe habits.
Since the DNA of some Eurasians still contains traces of a Neanderthal heritage, perhaps it may be possible for humans to crossbreed with Bigfoot, since sightings of the tall, vocal, tree-beating subhuman seem so common on cable TV.
If a "flexible mate choice" event takes place in a nearby forest as habitat change continues, you could end up with a new neighbor with a new name that sounds a little like a Canadian province:
Sasquatchaman.