[CRUDite]

I remember reading about a bear classed as a link between brown bears and polar bears. Post mortem, under a grinning hunters foot. I remember wondering if he had killed the first and only hybrid that would have bridged the gap for a doomed species. Melodramatic perhaps. Actually I see there is a wiki! It seems there is one way gene flow.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly–polar_bear_hybrid

[hinkley]

My understanding is that those are not particularly uncommon, and that they're being hunted to prevent hybridization from occurring.

But I don't know what we think the world is going to look like in 10,000 years if we keep making species extinct and stopping them from re-integrating with their close relatives. Completely new species aren't going to pop up in that time. It's just going to be new specializations of existing ones. And if we keep going this way, everything is going to turn into houseflies and rodents.

[whiddershins]

I'm under the impression Polar Bears are kinda-sorta just a special case of Brown Bears.

[robotresearcher]

There's a black bear mutation for white fur that's common enough that 'Spirit Bears' are a thing in local culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermode_bear