One person from Jamaica told me that she had a hyena/Alsatian cross. Is this possible? Is there a breed of dog called “hyenas”? I always thought that they were not related.
Q: Okay, so could a hyena cross with either a cat or a dog and produce offspring?
A: No way! In order to produce offspring, even sterile ones, the parents have to be sufficiently closely related to at least be in the same family of animals. Dogs are in one family, the Canidae. Cats are in another, the Felidae. And as I’ve just said above, hyenas are in their own family. They couldn’t possibly produce offspring with any canid or felid, not even with artificial fertilization in a laboratory.
The hyena is Hyaena brunnea, different genus then the dog Canis familiaris.
Maybe the perosn was referring to an African Wild Dog.. They are real dogs and look a little like hyenas.
The African Wild Dog Lycaon pictus is a different genus than domestic dogs (Canis) and I have never heard of any hybridization between the two. In any case, even if it were possible it is wildly unlikely that anyone would have any such animal as a pet.
A hyena-dog cross is pure and utter bullshit. The person who told you this was either lying or delusional.
Might it have been meant facetiously, along the same lines as Daniel Boone being half man, half grizzly, and half alligator? As in, the dog is an Alsatian, but the owner is impressed with its bite strength, or the like.
Well, OK, they could have been joking too.
I had always assumed that the African Wild Dog was in the genus Canis. Do you know the rationale for giving them a seperate genus? Morphologically, they sure seem very close to dogs/wolves, at least superficially. Is there DNA data that places them more distant?
That is the traditional classification. I believe that it may be in part because of dentition, the lower third molar being much smaller than in Canisl. At least one reference I checked gave them their own subfamily, Lycaoninae, separate from Canis, Vulpes, etc.
However, after checking around I found this cladogram (scroll down), based on more recent information, which indicates they are nested within Canis. If this is correct, they of course should be in the same genus. In this case it is quite possible that they could hybridize, since I believe all members of the genus produce fertile hybrids.
However, I suspect that a Lycaon would be far more likely to eat a domestic dog than to mate with it, so I stand by my statement that hybridization would be unlikely. 
Here’s a more technical reference, although it doesn’t have much more detail on the relationship between Canis and Lycaon.
The other wolf-like canid that has traditionally been placed in a different genus is the Indian Dhole, Cuon alpinus.
Well… you believed the “WENDY” story, so they were going for broke.
Interestingly, that cladogram puts the wolf/dog split at 1.5M years ago. Not sure if the time scale is meant to be accurate, but I doubt anyone would support that assertion.
Touche`
Yeah, that definitely seems way off. I think even the research that has tentatively pushed the domesticaton date back over 100,000 years B.P. has been criticized. 1 -1.5 million years B.P. seems closer to the coyote/wolf split ( shown on that cladogram as ~ 3 million B.P., which also seems too far out ), not the wolf/dog split ( if you even want to call it split - many wouldn’t ).
- Tamerlane
Wendy story? 
I have many fond memories of telling that joke on the beach in Jamaica around about 1999. 
I don’t know where you got that headline, but calling a fossa “half dog and half cat” is incorrect, especially in the context of this thread. The article makes it pretty clear that the fossa has an ancient lineage, and is not a hybrid.
Tamerlane: Yes, one certainly could argue whether or not there is actually a “split” between the wolf and dog lines.
I made it up in what turned out to be a wildly successful Whoosh attempt.