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LOL!
I will open class with this one tomorrow!!
OT
someone posted a gorgeous picture of one of these horses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhal-Teke
I was intrigued, guessed recessive gene for the coat…and sonuvagun, a likely lethal recessive linked to follicle development. (See Chinese Crested Hairless Dog for recessive follicle genes).
Pity. It’s a shame that people who breed animals seem to ignore genetic problems as long as possible. Or longer.
Final note: “rare” is not always a good thing. Anymore a “rare” trait has me suspicious there is a reason it is rare.
The hairless gene in Cresteds and Xolos is dominant, not recessive.
I think you meant to say ‘American Hairless Terriers’.
I think you’re both getting at the same thing. Hairlessness is semi-dominant so it acts like both dominant and recessive, i.e. one copy is enough for phenotype (dominant) but two copies causes a problem (recessive). You might say that hairlessness is dominant, death/dismemberment is recessive.
Interesting reading on the Hairless Foal syndrome in Akhal-Tekes;
http://www.akhalteke.info/the-hairless-foal-syndrome-1-66-en.html
BTW; it is apparently Russia’s fault there there is little diversity in the breed.
Many of the native horses of Russia suffered during the Soviet years when improved breeds were the focus of the State Studs. Old types were shuffled aside in favor of horses that had economic value – but then that was true for many of the old European breeds around the middle of the last century, too. The structure of horse breeding in Soviet Russia just made it possible to be more thorough about it.
All the breeds directly impacted by the rise of the gas engine (namely draft and coaching breeds) and by the fall of the European aristocracy (ceremonial harness breeds) either died out or are dealing with the effects of bottlenecks. Tekes are pretty bad, but that last group – technically called “galakarossiers” – have had it even worse. Just google “Friesian” and “inbreeding”.
Lesli Kathman recently posted..Macchiato
Oh Chris; from the above website; you’ll love this;
Regarding the Hairless Foal Syndrome it can be conjectured, not without some evidence pointing towards this, that it has been the abnormal (for the breed) selection on type and sparse hair and the heavy inbreeding which has sustained this recessive within the breed. The various foals have been reported to have been born to “the typiest of parents” and themselves are said “to show very refined type”, as per the modern and warped definition of what is type for the breed.
The first hairless foals were registered in the Akhal Teke breed 1938. By 2008 such foals have been born in Turkmenia, Russia, Germany and the USA. The lines and families carrying the defect have been vaguely narrowed down to Bek Nasar Dor, Sapar Khan, Slutshay, Toporbay and Kir Sakar.
Given that there are several quite popular sires among the known carriers and given the very close breeding of any modern Akhal Teke, we are right now only seeing the tip of the iceberg. The statistic likelihood of a foal receiving the defective gene from two carrier parents is 25%, which will cause an affected individual. Inheritance of one gene from such a pairing, thus becoming a carrier, is at 50%.
Sad – those foals look so pitiful! If they lived to maturity, they’d probably be useful for siring ‘typey’ offspring.