History’s most famous hybrids

To understand hybrids, we must first go back 14 billion years, to precisely three minutes after the Big Bang. Since those first few moments, matter has been mingling, bonding, binding and fusing into hybrids – at first to form atoms, then elements and compounds and the building blocks of life as we know it. In other words, hybrids are as old as time itself.

Of course, when you think of hybrids today you’re more likely to picture a car than some chemical reaction in the nuclear fires of a supernova, but still, the principle is the same. Sometimes, two things simply work better together. Petrol and electricity, for example. Or gin and tonic.

In fact, hybrids are all around us, and even inside of us. Everybody knows that humans are 60 per cent water, which of course is a hybrid. Look around and you’ll see hybrids absolutely everywhere, from farmer’s fields to far-flung forests, from test tubes to test tracks. And, as you’re about to see, some of them even changed the world…

Centaur

Possibly the most famous of all mythological beasts, these half-human, half-horse hybrids were said to worship the God of Wine, which may explain their reputation as boisterous, hoofy drunkards. The story goes that Centaurs were dreamed up by the Ancient Greeks, probably as a reaction to their first encounters with nomads on horseback, who from a distance looked like an all-in-one horse and jockey combo with an outside chance in the 4.10 at Kempton.

Pizzly Bear

They’ve been romping in zoos since the Eighties, but polar bears and grizzlies rarely meet in the wild, let alone produce crossbreed cubs. In fact, with only a handful of sightings, few believed that pizzly bears existed at all outside of captivity, until somebody shot one in 2006. DNA tests confirmed it was a hybrid: white like a polar bear but with the face of a grizzly, along with brown paws and big claws. Nobody knows for sure what’s bringing them together, although one theory is that climate change is causing their habitats to overlap.

Toyota Prius

Believe it or not it’s over 20 years since Toyota launched the Prius, the world’s first mass-produced hybrid vehicle and one of the most important cars of all time, up there with the Ford Model T, the original Mini and the McLaren F1. When it first came along, even the iPhone was still ten years away, and few thought that – one day – even supercars would be fuelled by a mixture of petrol and batteries. Today, a world without hybrids seems unthinkable, and the Prius, now in its fourth generation, has sold over four million units.

Frankenstein’s Monster

In Mary Shelley’s famous novel – often regarded as the first work of science-fiction – it’s not entirely clear how Victor Frankenstein made his monster, though it was most likely a gruesome hybrid of flesh and bone harvested from graves and slaughterhouses, stitched together and brought to life in a flash of alchemy. What we do know is that his creation was eight-feet tall and hideously ugly, yet sensitive and emotional. Or so it said on Tinder.

Bloodhound SSC

Hybrid cars are as much about performance as efficiency, but even so, Bloodhound SSC, the 1,000mph car, takes things to a whole new level by combining a jet engine – the sort you’d find in a Eurofighter Typhoon – with a cluster of rockets. In all, it has about 135,000 thrust horsepower, which is more than eight times the power of all the cars on the F1 grid combined. Even the fuel is pumped by a supercharged, 550bhp V8. Just as well when you consider it’ll need 40 litres of rocket oxidiser for every second of its top speed run in South Africa next year.

Broccoflower

What do you get when you combine broccoli and cauliflower? Apart from a touch of gas, you’ll also have a broccoflower, a superfood with nutritional superpowers. It’s one of several veggie and indeed fruity mashups, all the result of crafty cross-pollination, including the grapple (grape plus apple), rabbage (radish plus cabbage), aprium (apricot plus plum) and lemato (you can probably guess).

Water

Compounds (chemical hybrids of two or more elements) are all around us, though none are more abundant than water. The world contains around 1,260 trillion million litres of the stuff, which if spread evenly over the Earth’s surface would have a depth of 2,800 metres. Yet if you could condense it into a four-litre jug, only one tablespoon would be freshwater while the rest would be salty oceans. And get this: in a 100-year period, a single water molecule spends 98 years in the sea, 20 months locked away as ice, about two weeks in lakes and rivers, and less than a week in the atmosphere.

Chimera Embryo

In genetics, a chimera is a hybrid organism with cells from two different species. In this case those species are pigs and people, after scientists injected human cells into an animal embryo. It’s controversial, but by editing animal embryos you could use them to host human organs for vital transplant operations. So rather than waiting for a donor, you instead grow a custom organ inside an animal. Unless it all goes horribly wrong and you get a freaky pork-person with a gammon face and trotters for hands.

MMA fighting

A full-contact, hybrid combat sport otherwise known as cage fighting. In the early days it paired contestants with two distinct fighting styles, but modern fighters combine techniques from all sorts of martial arts including judo, karate and jiu-jitsu, along with boxing, wrestling and other ways of giving somebody a good kicking. It has since grown into a worldwide hit, with global championships such as the UFC and superstars like Conor McGregor.

Puggle

Humans have been matchmaking dogs for centuries. But while some are bred for useful reasons like fetching pheasants or sniffing out stowaways, others are designed to fit in a handbag. Or to have a ridiculous name. Take the Puggle, for example, the comedy offspring of a Beagle and a Pug. There’s more. The list of top designer dogs includes labradoodles, horgis, cockapoos and schnoodles. Even bulldogs and shih tzus have shared a bone or two.

Tree of 40 Fruit

The Tree of 40 Fruit is an arboreal artwork created by American art professor Sam Van Aken, who grafts buds from various fruit trees onto a single ‘stock’ tree. Over several years the stock tree eventually grows branches from its different donors, each bearing a unique fruit, including peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines and cherries. So far he’s planted 16 of these hybrid trees in seven US states, which in springtime blossom pink, crimson and white.

Lexus LS500h

In the not-too-distant future, every car will feature hybrid or electric tech. Already though, carmakers such as Lexus and Toyota have a hybrid-electric version of almost every model in their showroom. In fact, 99 per cent of Lexus’s UK sales are petrol-electric hybrids, such as the new LS500h, an exec saloon with limo-like luxury – soothing and quiet when you need it to be, but also capable of proper performance with very low emissions. All this thanks to the world’s first multi-stage hybrid system featuring a 3.5-litre V6 working together with clever electric motors. The best of both worlds? That’s what hybrids are all about, after all.