For the source text click/tap here: Chullin 136
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The obligation of the priestly gifts applies only to a behemah—a domesticated animal such as an ox or sheep—and not to a chayah, a wild animal such as a gazelle or deer.
The Minchat Chinuch (§4), following the Talmudic discussions, considers a case that is not scientifically possible but raises fascinating theoretical questions: the offspring of a gazelle and a female goat, or of a male goat and a female gazelle.[1]
In Chullin 80a, the Talmud raises a halakhic uncertainty concerning whether “chayshinan le-zera ha-av”—whether the father’s seed is considered. In other words, does halakhah recognize paternal lineage among animals, so that the offspring is regarded as related to both parents? Or, in animals, does the offspring follow the mother alone?
We claim that Halakhic identity is domain relative. When the question is one of issur — species, prohibition, mixture, the permissibility of an act — halakhah tends toward an ontology of emergence: two sources generate a third thing that is not the sum of them. When the question is one of mamon — who owes what to whom — halakhah tends toward an ontology of partition.