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Has/is there ever been a creature that reproduces with creatures of another species?
(literature.cafe)
this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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Simply put, no.
The nearest you can get to the notion you are trying to explore are crossbreeds between horses and donkeys, dogs and wolves, and captivity involuntary crossbreeding of large cats.
These crossbreedings are only possible because the animals involved share a common ancestor that is still close enough in the evolutionary history to allow the mating, fertilization and subsequent successful carrying of offspring.
Dogs and wolves are so close as species their offspring is completely viable. Dogs (canis familiaris) are technically a sub species of wolves (canis lupus).
Some crossbreeds of big cats are infertile and some are genetically viable. The mating and crossbreeding is possible because all cats are in the same family (felidae), hence, still very close but already far enough between species that offspring may or may not be viable (capable of reproducing afterwards).
Donkeys and horses are already far apart enough that any offspring is completely inviable.
So, by this same logic, the more far apart two species are from their common ancestors, the more difficult it becomes to achieve successful crossbreeding or crossbreeding at all.
A cat and a dog can not crossbreed. A bear and a dog can not crossbreed. Humans and apes can not crossbreed.
No animal, no life form, can successfully reproduce with another if they are not of the same species or do not share very, very close ancestry.
So humans and chimps are genetically further apart than horses and donkeys, wolves and dogs?
Yes.
The common ancestor from which all great apes - chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and humans - derived and evolved is so far away in evolutionary history that crossbreeding simply became impossible.
Logic and empiric evidence from other animals, today, suggests there was a period of time where these diverging species could still intermingle and crossbreed. At least in theory. It would be quite hard to take such events as granted and even more to prove it.
What can be asserted is that through a time scale that is incredibly hard to conceptualize for most - millions of years - from a common ancestor several new species evolved, adapting to their environment and changing in response to it, to the point the "cousins" can no longer recognize each other as such.
Yep. Dogs; are because of us ~40,000 years ago, technically a subspecies of wolf. I know horses started in North America, and donkeys in Africa....