What Are Hybrids?
The word "hybrid" has a lot of different meanings, ranging from science to agriculture to automobiles, but none of them are extremely clear on what the word is or means. It comes from a Greek word meaning "mongrel," specifically referring to cows, but is often heard in reference to hybrid cars.
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What is a Hybrid?
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A spork looks like a spoon, but the prongs on the front come from its fork relative. The definition according to Merriam Webster is "an offspring of two animals or plants of different races, breeds, varieties, species or genera." This definition has been expanded to include non-organic objects as well. A simple example is the spork, a utensil that combines the shallow scoop of a spoon with the prongs of a fork. Even the name is a hybrid of two words: spoon and fork. A hybrid can be any number of combined objects.
Hybrid Cars
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The hybrid car can be any one that combines two different power sources to move. One of the most common examples is the gas-electric hybrid. The vehicle is an electric car that has an onboard gas-powered generator for when the battery in the car runs low compared to a gas-powered vehicle, which uses an internal combustion engine to power the drive train. This does not include flex-fuel cars, which are still gas-powered but can use two different types of gasoline.
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Hybrid Plants
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Within a family of plants, you can combine two different types of flower to create a third hybrid variety. If you were to take a red rose and a white rose, for example, and cross-pollinate the two with each other, you would grow a pink rose. This applies to aspects other than color. There are types of ivy that thrive more in warm climates than cold, and others that thrive in colder climates. A hybrid, if bred properly, could survive safely anywhere.
Hybrid Animals
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If two of the same animals mated, they would create a third of the same animal. However, if you mated two similar animals of a different species, they result in a hybrid animal. A mule is an example of a hybrid animal, bred from a male donkey and a female horse. However, the result of this breeding is a sterile animal that cannot breed. This is not the same as cross-breeding dogs, for example, because all dogs are the same species, and their offspring are not sterile.
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