Selective Breeding Research Paper

The pug is a brachycephalic breed of dog that has been selectively bred for aesthetic purposes, the highly desirable double curl tail is a genetic defect and in more serious forms leads to paralysis. Which means that the personal health issues for the breed is the first biological implication.They do however have a fairly long lifespan, averaging between 12 and 15 years, yet due to the fact that they have been bred for extremes, many health issues are known to be associated with the breed – as so some genetic disorders. Eye problem such as entropion, corneas and prolapse can affect these selectively bred dogs. They are also highly prone to being affected by hip dysplasia. Demodectic mange, necrotizing meningoencephalitis, hemivertebrae and breathing issues are other problems that have been known to affect the breed. Genetic disorders can include degenerative

As long as dogs are being selectively bred for aesthetic and physical characteristics, they will continue to suffer. Selective breeding is the process in which human beings breed animals to produce desired traits in the offspring. Eventually dogs were being bred less for the ability to work and more for how the animals looked. Selective breeding does have its own benefits. The clubs keep track of the dogs and their lineage, which is helpful for telling if the dog has any family history of disease. When breeders use inbreeding or line breeding it greatly increases the chances of genetic diseases. The alternative to purebred dogs and the health problems associated with them would be buying a mixed breed. Genetic diversity is important for

Dog breeding is dangerous because to make a perfect dog they too often inbreed and cause birth defects and other health issues in dogs. Terry Allen, an “In These Times” senior editor who has written the magazine’s monthly investigative health and science column since 2006, argues in “We’re Breeding Dogs to Death” that “neither price, pedigree nor being loved like a member of the family can shield a dog from the pain, breathing difficulties, cancer, panoply of debilitating genetic disorders, mental illness, crippling physiognomy and shortened life span that disproportionately plague purebreds.” The article “Selective Breeding or Artificial Selection” explains that in dogs, the “frequency of being homozygous for rare recessive disorders increases when inbreeding occurs, potentially causing severe

Humans have been manipulating genetic transfer for over 10,000 years since our hunter- gatherer ancestors began to settle in one place and started farming and planting crops. Those humans observed and chose organisms from natural selection to select and breed organisms that showed characteristics desired by them and this began the process of selective breeding. Selective breeding favours recessive alleles that do not persist in wild populations. Selective breeding is a process of increasing the frequency of rare and recessive alleles so that they appear in homozygous form. This has the effect of eliminating the alleles for wild type from the population and the process of domestication has become irreversible. The domestic species has become dependent on humans for their survival. It is from these domestic species that humans have selected and breed favourable genetic traits for their benefit, be it higher yield in plant crops, sweeter tasting fruit, and more milk from dairy cows or ease of handling stock, selective breeding continues to be used today.

English bulldogs are no longer a fit healthy dog, and people are now saying that there is no such thing as a healthy bulldog and their poor health and survival is a result from selective breeding. English bulldogs suffer from almost every possible disease. A 2004 survey by the Kennel Club found that these dogs die on average at an unfortunate age of 6.25 years. Over the years the English bulldog’s physical traits have been breed to the extreme. Their faces have become flatter, the legs have shortened, head is larger and the well-known under bite has grown as seen in Fig.1. Although these traits seem to look ‘cute’ or ‘desirable’ to humans it is having a massive effect on the dog. The shortness and shape of the English bulldog today means that

Artificial selection – a breeder that selects desired traits for a species and then breeds that species to have those traits.

As anyone who has seen a televised dog show can attest, some dogs are deformed in disturbing ways. One might look at the “excessively wrinkled skin of the Chinese Shar-Pei,” the “the flat face of a bulldog,” or the “low-slung eyelids of a Bloodhound” (PBS), and think, “That can not be healthy.” The fact of the matter is that these deformities are far from healthy. As the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) points out, the Shar-Pei’s skin (due to it’s “excessively wrinkled” nature) is prone to skin infections, the Bloodhound’s droopy eyes are practically magnets for eye infection, and the Bulldog’s face is so squished that it can never breathe correctly. While these deformities may be more obvious, overly large or small pedigree dogs have their own slew of health problems (Rooney and Sargan). As Rooney and Sargan disclose, very small dogs (known as toy breeds) often have dislocated kneecaps, heart problems, and trouble staying warm. Big dogs, such as Great Danes, can suffer from heat prostration and orthopedic issues (Rooney and Sargan). According to Rooney and Sargan, almost every purebred breed of dog is more likely to have at least one genetic disease compared to mixed breeds. However, physical problems are not the only thing purebred dogs have to face: behavioral problems are also more prevalent in certain breeds (Rooney and Sargan). Rooney and Sargan reveal that

What exactly does genetically modifying organisms mean? Society has been doing it for thousands of years. Selective breeding has been practiced to achieve things such as sweet corn, a rosebush, or a desirable dog breed (Genetically Modified Foods). Selective breeding, also called “traditional processing” by farmers, is when the desirable traits of

While one may think it is easy to own a bulldog, the breed is known to have major health conditions. Many bulldogs are known to have shorter lifespans compared to other dog breeds. A large majority of bulldogs require a soft palate surgery in order to even breathe properly. Elongated soft palates narrows the airways in bulldogs, causing increased airway resistance. This, in the worse case, can lead to heart failure or even death. Bulldogs also tend to have problems with bones and joins. Chondrodysplasia, a structural defect found in bulldogs, causes the legs in bulldogs to stop or slow down and also makes their backs lengthen. One health

Although some would have you believe that the prevalence of genetic disorders in these dogs is exaggerated, much evidence points the other way. Some estimates claim up to 25% of dogs registered in the American Kennel Club have some genetic complication. (Lemonick, np.) Since American Kennel Club breed standards only pertain to physical appearance, dogs with unseen problems are allowed to pass on these defects, so long as exteriorly they conform to expectations. Because if this, vast amounts of medical conditions are becoming increasingly common among registered dogs. As the arbiter of purebred dog breeding, the American Kennel Club has a heightened responsibility to help protect the health of the breeds they represent. Despite this, the

This standard look of these work dogs continued to be the ideal image of these breeds, over 130,000 becoming victims of these surgeries per year (Broughton 1), setting the expectations of the breeds according to the American Kennel Club (AKC), a top show-breed company. Despite the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) recommending to the AKC to change their standards on breeds, the AKC allows certain uncropped and undocked breeds to have “disadvantage in the show ring [so] that showing is not a realistic option”. Coile provides a chart which illustrates that the American Kennel Club currently has approximately fifty breeds of dogs that are susceptible to the expectation that their ears must be cropped (Coile 2, 13-16). These standards that are set on the canines cause the breed to be viewed only that way. An uncropped working dog, terrier, or hunting dog that is typically cropped also tends to be harder to place into homes. In Karyn Miller-Medzon’s report “Fashion Victoms”, an interviewee, Sue Sternberg discusses the difficulty of adopting out a natural eared, ‘crop’ dog. Sternberg states that “People just aren’t used to the look…. It’s

Dog breeds have increased dramatically. In fact, 90% of these breeds were created in the past 100 years (Collegehumor). This is due to genetic manipulation caused by humans trying to achieve a certain look or certain characteristics from an animal that others did not contain. Many a person says that mutts are dirty, unhealthy dogs, when in-fact; “mutts are dogs in their healthiest state (Collegehumor)”. Breeders deny the dogs the right to mate with other dogs of

During breeding season which lasts from February until July, is where I learned the most out of all the things we do. Everything we did was a learning process for me. First we would collect the stallion, a stallion is a male horse. My job was to go get the stallion from the other barn. My first time I walked over I was biting at my fingernails. Stallions are a lot more aggressive, but once I got to him into the barn I felt relieved. I hooked the horse up to a post while I went to get the AV ready. The AV is like a rubber sling, that is filled with hot water. Once that is done, I put the AV into the phantom. The phantom is made to look and feel like a real female horse for the stallion. The process finally begins when you untie the stallion, he pretty much runs the

Genetic engineering is the alteration of an organism’s genotype using recombinant DNA technology to modify an organism’s DNA to achieve desirable traits. (OpenStax 459). The main purpose however of genetic engineering is to deepen the understanding of how genetics works, as well as how it can be applied to the rest of the world. For example growing body parts on mice, or make crops resistant to pesticides, help them grow faster, make them produce faster and much more. The process of genetic engineering according to FAO Corporate Document Repository occurs in 9 steps:

Selective breeding decreases the genetic biodiversity of the population’s gene pool, since it is removing the ADA deficiency causing allele it is also removing all other alleles that the unused embryos contained. Which over time could cause the ADA deficiency allele and perhaps others to be lost from the population thus decreasing the genetic biodiversity of the gene pool. However, without the presence of these treatments natural selection would have selected against those individuals with ADA deficiency meaning that they would have reduced fitness and reproductive success. Therefore over time without interference it is likely that it would have been lost in the gene pool or remaining in the gene pool at a very low frequency. This would result in a decrease in genetic biodiversity due to the physically limiting nature of ADA deficiency. Thus, selective breeding is accelerating the natural rate of removal of this disease allele from the population which is desirable as any increase in the disease allele frequency would decrease the health, survival and fitness of the population as a whole.