Purebreds are the CANCER of Our World !
Think of the following text as two people speaking to one another:
Yes, he was, his lump has been tested and it’s not malignant! Well done! Well, let me explain. Let’s first start with a little history lesson about dog breeds. There are many estimates about when we domesticated dogs, some going from 15.000 years ago to others going to 100.000 years ago, it’s a blurry period of human history, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when we first domesticated them. That’s because dog-like characteristics, to be more specific the genes that code dog-like characteristics are linked to the tamer genes. There are many studies that have been done proving this, one of those was done in the 50s where Dmitry Belyaev, a Russian geneticist, tried to tame foxes selecting the ones with tamer characteristics and breeding only those, in the end, what he got was a dog like fox, some even barked! No, dogs are descendants of wolves, most probably foxes and wolves have a common ancestor and that’s why their genes behaved the same when under the selective pressure humans made to make them tamer. We are getting there! Victorian Era span from 1837 to 1901, it’s characterized by the time when Queen Victoria was reigning Great Britain and was a time of many changes, one of those changes was the beginning of dog breeds! Do you know how a breed is created? Then, of course, you don’t understand the reason why breeds are bad Ok, I’ll give you an intro to genetics! Wait let me explain, it’s not that hard! Yes, that’s because of dominant and recessive genes Let’s keep going with the same example, we have the genes for brown eyes let’s call it B and the gene for blue eyes let’s call it b, why did I put one as uppercase and one as lowercase? Because brown eyes is a dominant gene! Every time you have a dominant gene that’s the one that expresses, while the blue one, a recessive gene, does not express unless you have bb. In this example, you have 25% probability of having a child with Brown eyes (BB), 50% of having a child with Brown eyes which carries the gene for blue eyes(Bb) and 25% of having a child with blue eyes(bb). In our bodies we all have systems to prevent cancer, we have so many systems to prevent cancer that you can’t even imagine, and even if we do develop strange cancer like mutation our own body signals that cell to blow up and the cell dies. Some of those systems are coded into our genetic for example the tumor suppressor protein folliculin, which is in the region 5q12 on the canine chromosome. Yes, imagine that you have the gene to code folliculin, a dominant gene but you also have the gene coding for something else that it’s not folliculin but it’s recessive! What happens if you happen to breed with a female or male with the same recessive gene? Your child has a 25% of not being able to synthesize any folliculin, increasing the probability of him having cancer. Inbreeding decreases the genetic pool of the breed, so we have a large portion of the breed population carrying the same recessive genes for the same disease, so it increases the probability of a puppy, getting 2 recessive genes of the same gene! I’ll give you an analogy to make it more understandable, imagine a genetic ocean with 20 or 30 sharks, what is the probability of you going to the ocean for a swim and finding one of these sharks? Very low right? Now imagine you put 20 of those sharks in a genetic pool instead of an ocean, what is the probability of you finding one of those sharks? Very high right? It’s just like this, the inbreeding decreases the genetic ocean to a small genetic pool, making certain hidden diseases appear more. Well like I mentioned, you have folliculin in German Sheppard which increases the probability of having Renal Cystadenocarcinoma… let’s just name it RCND for short, it’s cancer that develops a lot in German Sheppard and is like the name says, renal cancer. Calm down, first thing I should mention is that there are well-done breeds, breeds that instead of starting with 6 dogs as the origin started with a lot more, breeds that introduce new genes into the pool every couple of years, the kennel club has strict regimentation against breeding members of the same family, but those laws need to be better applied. Crossbreeds, you can have a crossbreed dog, which basically crosses the genetic pool of 2 different species into 1 making it so the genetic pool is bigger and less likely to find one of “those sharks”. Wrong! Mongrels are the way to go! Mongrels have the largest genetic pool of all dogs since they haven’t been inbreeding for decades, I would say they surpass a genetic ocean and go straight to the genetic moon, they resist almost everything, they can live many more years than purebreds, healthier year, they are unique, almost as if you had a limited edition dog, you can buy them almost for free, or EVEN BETTER you can adopt one in your local shelter for free. Yes, they have however the same 2 “problems” as crossbreeds, they have an even more unpredictable temperament and an even more unpredictable size, but like I said before, educate the dog and you won’t have any temperament issues! Yes, my friend, like you mentioned Peanut, my dog, has a short nose, that’s because he is a purebred pug, no he doesn’t have cancer, at least not yet, but because of all this inbreeding and messing with the natural way of things Peanut has problems with dissipating heat, with anesthesia, and heart problems, these are just some of the problems with pugs. If you, by any chance want to buy or adopt a purebred dog you should always search for information about which breeds are the healthiest, many breeds that people think are strong have huge problems and malformations that can make their whole life a constant suffering! Hint: It has something to do with the topic i'm discussing Separator is done by me, on gimp, using this as source: Source Resources:
The steemSTEM (@steemstem) community is here to support STEM-related posts, where STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. If you wish your post to be noticed and curated by steemSTEM (@steemstem), then seriously consider the above. This will help us help you and shed light to posts left undervalued and unnoticed. If you're interested in STEM and like to create STEM-related content, feel free to use the #steemstem tag and join us in our channel in steemit.chat. We'd be happy to steem around with you!“You brought Peanut to the park! Wasn’t he in the vet last time we spoke?”
“Very good, since I talked to you I stopped giving normal dog food to my dog and started giving him what you recommended!”
“Last time you spoke you also mentioned inbreeding is also a major cause for the increase in dog cancer, why is that?”
There are many theories explaining how we first domesticated them, the popular ones tell us that either the humans took care of some wolf pups that later when they grew recognized men as their pack, or tamer wolves were able to scavenge through human trash, trough natural selection the tamer ones were selected and became even tamer, thus creating dogs.“But wolves and dogs are so different! Just look at poor Peanut, he is a little ball of fur with a short nose!”
“Wait so dogs are descendants of foxes?”
“Ok, I understand but we still haven’t arrived at breeds!”
Throughout the ages dogs have been used for a lot of different things, some for hunting, some for labor, some were even used to spin a wheel, that wheel made the meat that was on the fire rotate! Those dogs that were used for different types of work were, to some degree, different breeds, they were more adapted to do specific tasks, but they were never to divergent between each other, BUT THAT ALL CHANGED IN THE VICTORIAN ERA!“What? Victorian Era? That’s not so long ago!”
Around 150 years ago animals were kicked from living in large cities to the countryside, chicken, cows, horses, everything was kicked out of cities, except our “BFFs” dogs. The high-class British people without having anything to do started breeding dogs as a hobby. They noticed that if they breed big dogs with big dogs the result was an even bigger dog, if they breed short-nosed dogs with short-nosed dogs the result was a shorter-nosed dog, with that in mind they started breeding for specific characteristics, trying to create new characteristics in dog and having shows to compare different dogs with different characteristics, and thus they created new breeds!
To oversee the dog shows and the stud book they created the Kennel Club, nowadays we have many Kennel Clubs around the globe, one in the UK another in the USA, etc…“Ok, so they created new breeds but what is so bad about that?”
“No”
There are many ways to create a breed, but let’s focus on 1 of them.
Imagine we want a dog with big ears, we choose 3 male dogs AKA studs with big ears and 3 female dogs AKA bitches with big ears, we breed between them and from the puppies we choose 10 (5 bitches and 5 studs) that have the characteristic we are choosing, this is our F1, and we breed between them again and choose again, this is our F2, new dog breeds are created this way through inbreeding. Now a good dog breeder would sometimes introduce new bitches and new studs from the outside of this group, you know why? To increase the gene pool.“Gene Pool? That doesn’t sound like a place I would want to swim”
Imagine a human, a human is composed of many different types of tissues, those tissues are composed of many different types of cells, right? “yes” Ok, but are all those cells different genetically? No! All cells have the same DNA, some might have little differences because of mutation that happens throughout our lives, but let’s not count those. Depending on which genes cells express we have all different types of cells, brain cells, hepatocytes, skin cells, etc…
Source“Genes, expression, you are just making me more confused, can we go back to the history lesson?”
Genes are “the instruction manual” that tells us which proteins to synthesize, they are composed of a strand of DNA, they can code for a protein to make your eyes blue, or your eyes brown, or maybe to code how tall you are, they are what makes you, YOU, they are your entire being, depending on which cells we are talking about some genes are expressed while others aren’t.
We are born with 2 genes for the same characteristic, to those we call alleles, we get one allele from the chromosome our father gives us and one allele from the chromosome our mother gives us, we can have an allele for blue eyes or an allele for brown eyes or both.“Both?”
“Dominant? Here we go with the BDSM stuff again…”
Imagine your father has 2 alleles, one of them is for brown eyes and the other is for blue eyes, so your father is a Bb, his eyes color is Brown because that gene is dominant
Imagine your mother is just like your father a Bb, she also has brown eyes. Can you have blue eyes even though both your father and mother have brown eyes? Yes
“Ok that’s cool and all, but what does this have to do with cancer?”
This is great we have many systems in our own genetic code to prevent cancer, but we also have hidden diseases in our recessive genes!“Hidden diseases?”
“Ok I get it and what does it this have to do with inbreeding?”
Source
“Wow and this happens a lot in purebred dogs?”
You also have the rare human Li-Fraumens families, where a gene encoding TPS3, a tumor suppressor gene is mutated and so the descendants suffer from increase probability to develop certain types of cancer.“What now? I can’t have any dog?”
There are also studies done on the diseases each family member had so that we don’t breed those that have the highest probability to develop certain diseases. But not even all these laws can suppress the amount of inbreeding already present in some breeds.“Ok, then what can we do?”
Not only are crossbreeds healthier than purebreds they are also better-caring mothers and produce more milk! Amazing right!
But like everything in life crossbreeds don’t come without their own problems, by having a crossbreed it becomes harder to predict the dog temperament and size, in my honest opinion as a future vet, dog size only matters if you are living in an apartment and dogs are like any kid, if they have bad temperament you can educate them.“Ok, so crossbreeds are the way to go!”
“Mongrels? Why?”
“So, Mongrels are the Top Dogs?!”
“Anything else I should know about all this?”
The buying of pugs and other brachiocephalic dogs are a huge worldwide problem, people don’t realize they are buying dogs that are going to be in a constant suffering throughout their life, and they have a short life-span when compared to some of the mongrels, I’ve seen mongrels get up to 20 years!
Would you rather have your little four-legged friends for 20 healthy years? Or would you rather have your four-legged friends for 8 years of constant grasping for air, heat problems, nose infections, ear infections, and a high probability of their life ending with cancer? Your choice!
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A nice refreshing Platonic-dialogue take on writing a post!
And interesting subject matter. I'll keep it in mind for if I ever decide to have a dog again in the future.
P.S. Are human crossbreeds healthier too?!
Hahahah, human crossbreeds are more resistant to environmental changes and depending on the cross you make you can have different outcomes.
It's well known black people are more genetically gifted to do physical jobs, Asians are usually genetically gifted in intellect and i don't really know about white ppl... but, even though they have the DNA to be superior they can choose not to use it.
I see it happen all the time in the gym, a black guy walks in and can grow a lot bigger much faster than i ever could, i also see it happen in some of my college degrees where asians are really good especially at math, but even though they have the genetic to be superior they need to put the work in to actually achieve it, it's not like they can just sloth on the couch...
Genetics is a fun topic, did you know a large % of the asian population doesn't have an enzyme that processes alcohol, thus making them get drunk with smaller amounts of it
I definitely know about the alcohol thing, from experience, an Asian roommate told me, and that's how I found out about it and read about it. That girl could get drunk on one beer lol!
I don't know about the rest though. Like Steven Pinker says, research on this topic is suppressed, due to political correctness and accusations of racism etc. I know, from observation, that blacks, on average, must have the physical advantage or else they probably wouldn't be over-represented in sports. I don't know about Asians and math tho. Could that be because of nurture rather than nature? Could it be their school system? Could it be that there's so many of them so the best of them go to study overseas, usually choosing math subjects that have less of a language barrier, and so this idea gets spread that they're better at math?
regarding the Asians i have to 100% agree, it might be because of many reasons, there should be studies about it but no one can do them because they would be accused of racism like you said... political correctness should not interfere with science and facts!
@esteem
Nice post this is new thing for me but now I know thanks.
Keep it up.
Thanks :) Ill keep it up my friend! I just checked your posts, i liked some of them :D
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STOPGeorge Mendel? Laws of genetics? Haha. This is what I could guess from all the heavy stuff above.
P.S. You edit your posts too damn well man. Gotta take the advice you gave me :)
Gregor!
How the hell didn't i see that xD I read that as Gregor instead of George xD
George Mendel! That's right! One point for Gryffindor xD
It was hard editing my post the first 2 times, now i do it in a few hours, it's almost instinct i know what i want and i know what to do and where to put it, it's almost like riding a bicycle
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To start with, I wish you all the best for your dog!!
You are about purebreds. My previous dog (a poodle) suffered from kuching and I found in the web that poodles are more prone to this disease and this might lead to cancer that she died from at 10 years old :(
Peanut is just a fictional character for my stories xD i don't have any dogs atm, my last one died of brain cancer 3 years ago, i wasn't even expecting it, he went from ok to really bad in a couple of weeks, the brain cancer increased his brain size smashing it to the wall of his cranium and he was starting to get constant pains so unforntnaly i had to put him down... he was a boxer, which is one of the most probable breeds to have cancer, either skin cancer or brain cancer.
Even though i love boxers i'm never getting one again, ppl don't realize that most strange like purebred dogs are actually born via C-section, they are not born the normal way, and even "normalish" pure breeds like German shepherds have a very high incidence of hip dysplasia, among other things.
I'm probably going to make a post about all my dogs and why i hate purebreds in a couple of days, probably going to post my pictures with them, still don't know if i should leave out the face or not, i mean, most pictures i was 12 i changed a lot, so i don't think there is a problem with me posting them
Thanks for reading!!
Hey, podias fazer este post em português, o que achas?
Junta-te a nós em: Steemit Portugal
Abraço amigo!
Podia realmente, ia era demorar algum tempo e em termos de rewards iriam ser muito menos, eu escrevo diretamente em ingles sem passar pelo portugues, ainda por cima com a universidade e isso tudo nao sei se tenho muito tempo, tentar estudar/fazer posts/fazer comentarios/ginasio e ter o minimo de vida social possivel ja me deixa sem tempo... No verão posso tentar traduzir as coisas para portugues e postar debaixo da tag portuguese, ainda por cima este tema é um daqueles temas que a comunidade portuguesa devia saber, estou farto de apanhar bulldogs, pugs, cães braquiocefalicos no geral com problemas respiratorios, problemas de infencções e assim que vão para uma cirugia é basicamente isto que acontece: "levam com a anestesia e passam 2 horas ou mais á beira da morte com um anestesista a tentar manter o pobre animal vivo", eu dps tento traduzir quando tiver tempo, tenho de ajudar a comunidade tuga afinal de contas
Sim, com este post não te esqueças que estás a informar a comunidade tuga!
Como te compreendo em termos de gestão de tempo, agora com o steemit por vezes até me esqueço da parte social, mas não pode ser.
É trabalho na empresa, é trabalho extra e mais o steemit um gajo dá em louco.ahaha
Abraço amigo