wschippr- inbreeding does cause mutations. That is why in the US no on within the 5th degree of relationship is allow to marry. Father, Mother, Daughter, Son, Grandparents, Aunt, Uncle and first cousins. There is a reason why certain cultures have far more Mongoloid children. This is part of why the Amish and PENN dutch often have many retarded person in their groups. Mutations can occur when like gene ladders are too closely matched. About the show rabbits your talking about. I have a very good friend that shows rabbits at the national level and I talked to him about what you said. He told me that if he was to take an inbreed rabbit to a show he would be kicked from it. The mutation issues are too noticeable and makes it undesirable. Finding desirable and choice breeders is the best way. GOOD GENETICS! Inbreeding messes up the gene pool. -Robert
Inbreeding does not cause mutations. Usually people are carriers of a mutated gene. Inbreeding only elevates the risk of having genetic defects in your genes from two recessive alleles. If you breed together two carriers of a mutated gene, there is a chance that the offspring wight be mutated.
plmarsg8 thank you someone took grade 11 bio. And if you actually read what I wrote you would have read that they use to inbreed show rabbits and also I know people who breed show rabbits and they will inbreed if they like a colour strain (but never usually go past one or two generations, as it takes time for mutations to show up. All that I am saying is that the effects of inbreeding are exaggerated (well not the effects but at the speed at which they show is exaggerated.) I have witnessed third, forth, daughter-father lines of cats and rabbits, with no obvious signs of problems. And as far as RobertII said about you can control cat inbreeding with respect to what I had said earlier, how can you control cheetah inbreeding when the furthers relatives of any cheetah is the second cousins. They are already inbred to start with, every cheetah is related to every other cheetah. Once again I DO NOT INDORSE INBREEDING OF ANIMALS IF IT CAN BE CONTROLLED. I am just merely trying to tell people that all recent research has shown that inbreeding takes time to deteriorate a population, but once a purging happens the population recovers as it did with cheetahs (this tends not happen in captivity though unless you cull). One more thing if you really want to understanding inbreeding there is a game that I learned in first year bio, get a piece of paper a coin and a pen. Write down two genetic combinations such as A,a and A,A lets say a is the mutated gene that will deform the organism. Okay assign a value to each gene ie tails is a and heads is A. Each generation consists of one male and one female after the “breeding” the parents die. In order to breed you flip a coin for each off spring from each parent to see what gene they give it. Eventually you will find that one gene dies out and one that becomes dominate. This is a crude but simple way of showing what happens with inbreeding.
Inbreeding in a sense doesn't cause mutations. It acts as a catalyst to make mutations that might never apear, become expressed. So really, it does cause mutations. http://cc.ysu.edu/~helorime/inbred.html http://cc.ysu.edu/~helorime/inbred1.html
And, there basically are NOT any animals in the pet trade, other than those that have not yet become established, that are not inbred at least to some extent.
