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This is Butterfly the baby geep. She lives in Arizona, and is one of the only geeps in the whole world. Isn't she cute?
What is a geep?
A geep is the hybrid offspring of a sheep and a goat. In this case, Butterfly's mother was a sheep, and her father was a goat.
Wait, that can happen?
Apparently.
For serious?
You're looking at the results, man. I don't know what to tell you.
There are plenty of other hybrid animals that can result when two species' DNA is close enough, like ligers and zonkeys and mules. (Click on that mule link. There's a drawing of a donkey in a necktie romancing a horse holding a flower in its mouth. The only thing you need to see today.) To be fair, we didn't know goats and sheep were that close genetically either, but luckily for Butterfly, they are.
Why would a goat and sheep ever... you know?
Lack of other options, it sounds like. Butterfly's mom lives at a petting zoo with only ewes, no rams, which made one of the zoo's male goats her only potential love interest. And love, as they say, will find a way.
Where can I get a geep of my own?
Geeps are rare enough that you can't exactly buy one on the open market — even if you have the open space to let one roam. Looks like you're going to have to resume your selective breeding experiments. Good luck!
