No kidding. It blows my mind when people so absolutely refuse to listen to information that can help innocent animals not suffer day in and day out through everything from pain to abuse. And it’s even worse when these folks do everything in the name of being animal lovers. Disgusting.
Let’s see… “[A] hairless kitten named Prune was born. The kitten was mated with its mother (backcrossing), which produced one more naked kitten.”
:eek:
Animals don’t care. If the dam has a lot of desirable and not many undesirable traits, she’ll be back-crossed with her progeny sometimes.
Reminds me of my uncle (not THAT way, gutterminds!). He started feeding a stray cat outside his old apartment, then took her with him when he moved. She turned out to be pregnant. Had kittens (two of that litter currently live with me), then, because he “didn’t want to hurt them” (aka, get them snipped), some of the male cats mated with the mother again. The man went through six generations of constantly inbreeding cats before he got evicted from his apartment for having too many (he had something like 30 of them in a studio apartment!). He was shocked that the male cats would breed with their mother and sisters (“But they’re his mother and sisters!”).
Humans have such strong taboos about incest, I assumed that the aversion would also appear in other mammals, since inbreeding tends to be pretty universally bad.
(My emphasis.)
Um, wouldn’t that be your Dad? If by “raised” you mean bred, or bought puppies from breeders - in either case, creating more demand for these extremely deformed animals is perpetuating the same issues.
There are plenty of healthy purebred dogs. As I’ve pointed out before, my own preferred breed, the basenji, has had a chequered genetic past - the original gene pool was very small, and some of the conditions they are predisposed to, like Fanconi syndrome, are late-onset, often only becoming obvious after a dog has produced offspring.
BUT, the Basenji Club of America has successfully increased the gene pool by introducing new foundation stock. In the 1980s, some American breeders went to Sudan and bought a dozen hunting dogs from the Avongara region, where basenji-type dogs originated. These dogs are phenotypically similar to the modern American basenji, but have much lower prevalence of the genetic conditions. Upon their return to the US, BCOA petitioned the AKC to include these new animals in the basenji studbook, and were accepted. The club has repeated this several times, bringing in more foundation stock in 2006-8.
The new stock has already greatly improved the health of the breed. It also introduced a new coat colour to the basenji standard, brindle.
Most critters disperse upon reaching sexual maturity in one fashion or another - juvenile males are often driven off, even by their own parents - thus lowering the chances of a random mating between parent and offspring. In addition, most animals would probably prefer to not breed with their own parents, but when trapped in a studio apartment, it’s not like the cats have any other options, or even know such a thing as “other options” even exists.
Oh, shit, a whole fucking *dozen *new dogs! I bet your breed is so *much healthier *now.
Did you miss this bit? And of course, the effect is cumulative over many generations.
Inbreeding avoidance is related to body odour in at least some species - research has shown that some animals (mice and fish) can definitely tell one animal from another because of their smell, probably caused by combinations of genes called MHC. So on animal meets another, they have a sniff, and if they smell to much like each other, they are catagorized as “probably family member - do not mate”.
The jury is still out on exactly how this works, how well it works, and if all species (including humans) can do it. But it does seem to be clear that inbreeding is such bad new that there was a genetic method for avoiding it long before incest became a societal taboo.
But, if the gene pool is reduced enough, whoever is left is pretty much obliged to partake in inbreeding in order for the species to survive - in other words the basic survival instinct overtakes the no-inbreeding instinct. This is called a Population Bottleneck, and usually leads to two things - Inbreeding Depression (lowered fitness - what these dogs have now), and eventually the Extinction Vortex (genetic diversity falls so low that the species will certainly die out soon). That is what’s being done to these dogs, and it seems like that’s the future for them.
The solution to all this is Outbreeding - breeding between multiple stocks so genetic diversity increases. This usually results in Hybrid Vigor (or Heterosis) - increased health and fitness in animals with mixed breeds. Hence why you can head down to the SPCA and adopt a nice vigorous mutt.
So basically the breeders are bypassing some of the animals basest instincts by forcing them to mate, especially in cases like back-crossing. Inbreeding and bottlenecks do occur in nature, but the results are generally not good.
Sorry for the science hijack, but mate choice and inbreeding depression make up a part of my own work, so it’s interesting to see real, outside the lab, examples of it. Interesting and sad.
ETA: **purplehorseshoe **is, of course, also correct about dispersal being a very common method of inbreeding avoidance, which is also being quashed by breeders.
Some folks claim that the Sphynx causes less allergies in humans (I know that most allergies are triggered by cat saliva and not hair, but some are allegedly triggered by hair as well).
This provides more basis for creating the Sphynx than for some other “extreme” breeds.
Yes, yes I did.
Indeed. Animals don’t have taboos, after all. Or at least not what we would call taboos. ISTR reading about a study a number of years back demonstrating that in humans the instinct to search outside your kin group for a mate is so strong that it even carries over into unrelated “family” groups. There was some culture where groups of children were raised together, rather like a family, and even though it was encouraged for them to marry other people from that specific group, many of them would marry outsiders instead.
The choice of the word “forcing” is interesting here. Because that’s more like what I was assuming was happening with any “backcrossing,” since presumably the animals wouldn’t be mating with anything that closely related willingly (at a minimum, from an opportunity perspective).
ETA@Malthus:
Even in your own “explanation” you concede that you understand that Sphynx cats are not hypoallergenic (and, in fact, they may cause *worse *allergic reactions). They were trying to create a cat that people would buy because it looks neat. If they gave two shits about reducing allergic reactions, they’d be breeding the cats to have less of the protein in their saliva and sebum that triggers the allergies in the first place.
Sure, their ultimate aim was to make money and achieve fame in the cat-breeding world, no doubt.
Point is that the breed came about because of a fortuitous accident: the birth of a kitten with no hair. Certainly, if a kitten was born with less bad protiens in their saliva, the breeders would have run with that, too, but obviously bar genetic engineering they can’t actually arrange for that.
In any event, true or false, the alleged “hypoallergenic” characteristics (and I have no idea if they actually have any) are part of the “selling point” of the breed, and this is at least more of a reason than having a breed with a pushed-in face because it looks neat.
So as long as you can make a claim, regardless of whether or not it’s backed up in fact, it’s a valid motivation?
I’m having fun with Godwin today, so: How’s that Holocaust working out for you?
Well, I meant ‘forcing’ as in not giving them any other options. If you throw a bunch of siblings in together they will mate, because almost all animals have an incredibly strong instinct to reproduce. Of course there are a few who would mate with their siblings anyways, sometimes because even though they’re related they happen to have inherited fairly different sets of genes and thus don’t trigger the “you smell too much like me” response. Sometimes I think they’re just weird. After all, some humans choose to have children with siblings or cousins, despite the genetic and societal pressure not to.
What do you mean by the effect being cumulative? If you introduce 12 new dogs, with 12 new genomes, you’re increasing the gene pool with 12 genomes worth of genes. After that, no new genes are being added, you’re just rearranging the ones you have. Unless I’ve misunderstood what you’re saying.
The difference here is that many claim that the hypo-allergenic thing is true, at least for some, and I have no particular knowledge either way. Allegedly, not all cat allergies are triggered by protiens in saliva, though most are, and not being myself a vet or human physician, I have, to excuse the expression, no dog in that fight. 
In any event, the “claim” only has to be true for some, in order to beat the comparison - as there is no benefits whatsoever from a pushed-in face, etc.
We still lack hypo-allergenic people, so Dr. Mengele’s experiments were a total waste.
My point is that outcrosses to the new foundation stock will reduce the founder effect. It will increase the varience of genes within the gene pool, and not just for the first generation, similar to the effect of heterosis or outbreeding.
Oh, okay. I thought you were saying that genetic diversity would *increase *over time, not just that the effects of increased genetic diversity would last over time.
Many claim that at least some Jews eat Christian babies, and I have no particular knowledge either way. Allegedly, not all Jews abstain from drinking the blood of baptised children, though most do not, and not being a Jew or a Christian myself, I have no dog in that fight.
Well, I guess you can claim that Jews are just as likely to be snacking on babies as hairless cats are to be hypo-allergenic. If you want.
It’s called the Westermarck Effect Of course, the fact that incest does occur at times shows that it can also be overcome, but yes, it does function to reduce the amount of incest in humans.