When I approached the supervisors in the Zoology and Environmental wings of the Biology—Earth Sciences department as an undergraduate at University of Alberta, it was advised not to solicit advice for breeding from either the Microbiology or Genetics. The zoologists disclosed many of the people in these fields have a hallowed view of the world as the system delegates them to a career within the academic bubble offered by labs most of their lives with comparatively little field experience adjacent to their peers. On the other hand, the lab technicians’ works are vital as they release findings about DNA and enzyme markers; many techniques were imparted which are now actively being employed in the field. However, like everyone, most don’t have expertise in all facilities.
It is understandable why someone would seek consultation from a geneticist or a microbiologist, after all, they hold all the answers a breeder is looking for when it pertains to genetics. However the world isn’t a petri dish which can be sterilized. None of the animals we breed are in a vacuum like most laboratory specimen are confined to. A lab rat isn’t going to have the same plasticity of living in the walls of somone’s house as their wild counterpart. For a long time, the concept wasn’t grasped by this blogger as most reptiles live in sterilized Rubbermaids; and the logic at the time, a specimen free of deleterious diseases no longer face problems. However it is a bit fallacious to assume because domestic beings no longer live in the wild, they are no longer subjected to natural selection. It took years to register this factoid.
One cannot compare dogs with uniformly homozygous lab rats. Dogs romp around, they wade into lakes, they eat dirt and catch the occasional squirrel; and worst of all, they are still being predated upon by other critters. Man’s best friends become ill or get hurt in the process. Nature is constantly testing their plasticity every time we take them out for a walk as the dog inhabits an inbetween world we don’t share.
The argument from conservation biologists is this: nothing is ever static. The environment and its inhabitants is constantly changing all the time; and it favours populations who are the most adept at stabilizing in arising conditions. We need to stop thinking of canines as beings who can be chiseled and perfected, but rather as beings well-equipped to deal with anything thrown at them. It is a great disservice to future generations, some may consider it as a crime, to rob them of the best tools at hand for dealing with crises. It is with great regrets the wisdom of these evolutionary and conservation biologists went unheeded back when breeding for kicks as a young adult was trendy.
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