Thursday 18 September 2008

Genetic Flukes

Can a rabbit he "genetically engineered" to die within a certain timeframe? I was told of such thing and since it is the first time I am hearing it, I am about to embark on a research on this subject.

Maybe it wasn't a deliberate or planned purpose. It may be accidentally introduced into certain breeding stocks. But can you imagine rabbits being like light bulbs? In the olden days, light bulbs are known to last longer but these days you need to get them replaced quite frequently. This is done for recurring/repeat businesses I believe.

What happen is that these rabbits and their offspring goes through premature deaths. Meaning to say, these rabbits cannot live past a year or cannot produce viable kits.

What has become of our world I wonder. It is just too sad. I have no concrete conclusion at the moment. Shall do some read up on this and post my conclusion.

But my early guesses would be that in order to produce quality rabbits consistently, many breeders practice line-breeding and sometimes, inevitably in-breeding. Breeding of closely related specimens that is to boost or increase the good traits. Since mother nature works in her mysterious ways, I could only guess that through these line-breeding/in-breeding, beside from increasing the good genes in the offspring, they have also resulted in the increase of bad genes. Therefore, when the balance is tipped, we may get many undesired traits in the herd.

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