SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil's cat-puppy mystery has been solved.
Brazilian student Cassia Aparecida de Souza (L) and her
friend Gabriela Santos pat puppies that her owners claimed were her own
offspring born out of mating with a neighbor's dog, in the southern
Brazilian city of Passo Fundo, Rio Grande del Sur state, November 21,
2006. [Reuters]
|
Blood tests refute a Brazilian
woman's claim that her cat had given birth to three puppies, geneticist Adil
Pacheco said on Tuesday.
Cassia Aparecida de Souza, 18, from a poor neighbourhood of Passo Fundo in
southern Brazil, said last Friday that her cat Mimi had given birth to the three
puppies as well as three kittens, which did not survive.
"People who aren't experts often imagine things," said Pacheco, director of
the Institute of Biological Sciences of the University of Passo Fundo. "All the
facts contradict her."
Pacheco, who was asked by a local newspaper to conduct a chromosome test to
check the spectacular claim which gained wide media attention, said mammals
sometimes nursed the young from another species.