You can't make a blanket statement like that, crossing back a lot creates high homozygosity animals thats all. Now that can cause problems if there are negative recessive or polygenic traits to be brought out. If there is not, you create animals that can reliably have zero issues. Bringing in new genetic could actually be the downfall to a project, depending on the new genes brought in.Originally Posted by Spoons
I don't even see a difference between mammals and reptiles, look at many peoples rat colonies, focusing on high production zero issue rats.... eventually you selectively breed out the issues and just have healthy rats that don't have issues anymore and as a bonus make lots of babies on average. Unforchantly I feel behind on production and haven't caught back up so I have all sorts of random rat genetics now as I had to buy more. I didn't realize how good I had it with my inbreed rats.
It just happens that humans (everyone favorite thing to compare) seem to have a lot of negative traits on average, so hooking up with your close family will more than likely cause problems statistically. It's not to say you couldn't eventually breed out human genetic problems either, just would take an enormous amount of time and im sure theres issues with ethics of it also.
Look at a ball python and angolan python.They more than likely had a common ancestor that had two different paths of inbreeding to create the two species we have today. I think it would be silly to assume multiple paths lead to the exact same animals we have today. There was also more than likely many failures they are not around anymore.
Inbreeding can make stronger animals as it can make weaker ones, homozygosity just tends to make traits more extreme one way or another.
Reply With Quote