Is the evolution story really scientific?

[Scoobes]

Aielyn said:

Farmageddon said:

Aielyn said:

Many dog breeds are the result of artificial selection. But did you know that there are dog breeds that are incapable of breeding with each other? For instance, the beagle and the irish setter cannot breed with each other. Yet they can each breed with the same other types of dog - their DNA is just a little too distant from each other to produce viable offspring.

Do you have any sources for the bolded part? It sounds quite interesting.

I read it while looking into the issue. But there's a slight inaccuracy, now that I've looked a bit deeper. Apparently, they can produce viable offspring sometimes, but most of the time it's not viable. You can, for instance, find it mentioned here: http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/dog-breeds/

Just to follow on from this. Where a species starts and a breed ends is not always easy to define. Some cat species can successfully breed to give viable offspring. Lions and Tigers in captivity can be bred to produce ligers which can be further bred to produce liligers (apparently, I'm not making these names up!). They were long thought to be sterile, but it appears they (ligers) can be viable.