Emily Lake
Might be a replicant
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2014
- Messages
- 6,322
- Location
- It's a desert out there
- Gender
- Agenderist
- Basic Beliefs
- Atheist
Genetics interests me. But I am nearly ignorant. I know genes exist. I know there's chromosomes and things. I know some come from mom, some come from dad - at least in mammals. I know some amphibians have squishy genders. I know some genes mutate. I understand recessive and dominant genes because my dad was red-green color blind, so I'm a carrier. I've got most of the pop-science stuff hammered out okay, but beyond that, consider me a willing mind ready to absorb.
Let me lay out what I want to know. Dogs have been bred for eons as partners to humans. We've manipulated their genes for preferred physical and behavioral characteristics, to a point where we've created sets of genes that "breed true", and carry forward from one generation to the next with identifiable traits. There are many well-defined dog breeds. If a pure-bred dog gets out and gets funky with a random mutt, the offspring will resemble the pure-bred well enough that you can usually identify what sort of dog it was. As I understand it, this holds for a few generations... you can see that a dog is "part doberman" or whatever.
The same isn't true for cats. Cats haven't been with humans for quite as long as dogs, but certainly for long enough to have established at least a few well-defined breeds, such as siamese and abyssinian. But if a pure-bred cat gets out and has a midnight rendezvous with the tom next door, you're likely to get a random assortment of DSH (domestic short hair) out of it! You might still get points on the face, ears, and tail if one of the parents was siamese... but you're also likely to get stripes and whorls and spots. Even the coloring is not guaranteed to match either of the immediate parents.
My vet very, very briefly explained to me that cat genes are "jumpy". They bounce around and mix a lot, they don't hold together in groups or chains, so clumps of characteristics don't tend to hold together and get passed on as much. This means that it's very hard for "breed characteristics" to hold true from one generation to the next - if there's any interjection of other genetic material in there, you get mutts in short order. It also means that within just a couple of generations, you completely lose any breed characteristics if cats are left to mate uncontrolled.
So... First: Is what my vet told me true? Second: Can one of you well-educated people explain it in more detail, because I'm quite interested.
Thanks!
Emily
Let me lay out what I want to know. Dogs have been bred for eons as partners to humans. We've manipulated their genes for preferred physical and behavioral characteristics, to a point where we've created sets of genes that "breed true", and carry forward from one generation to the next with identifiable traits. There are many well-defined dog breeds. If a pure-bred dog gets out and gets funky with a random mutt, the offspring will resemble the pure-bred well enough that you can usually identify what sort of dog it was. As I understand it, this holds for a few generations... you can see that a dog is "part doberman" or whatever.
The same isn't true for cats. Cats haven't been with humans for quite as long as dogs, but certainly for long enough to have established at least a few well-defined breeds, such as siamese and abyssinian. But if a pure-bred cat gets out and has a midnight rendezvous with the tom next door, you're likely to get a random assortment of DSH (domestic short hair) out of it! You might still get points on the face, ears, and tail if one of the parents was siamese... but you're also likely to get stripes and whorls and spots. Even the coloring is not guaranteed to match either of the immediate parents.
My vet very, very briefly explained to me that cat genes are "jumpy". They bounce around and mix a lot, they don't hold together in groups or chains, so clumps of characteristics don't tend to hold together and get passed on as much. This means that it's very hard for "breed characteristics" to hold true from one generation to the next - if there's any interjection of other genetic material in there, you get mutts in short order. It also means that within just a couple of generations, you completely lose any breed characteristics if cats are left to mate uncontrolled.
So... First: Is what my vet told me true? Second: Can one of you well-educated people explain it in more detail, because I'm quite interested.
Thanks!
Emily