'The English bulldog has reached the point where popularity can no longer excuse the health problems that the average bulldog endures in its often brief lifetime'
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The English bulldog is now so inbred that there is little chance of improving its notoriously poor health, geneticists have concluded.
The lead researcher of a study condemned dog breeders and owners, saying more people appeared to be “enamoured with its appearance than concerned about its health”.
English bulldogs suffer from a range of horrendous health problems.
Its excessive wrinkles are prone to infection unless they are regularly cleaned. The dog also has breathing problems due to its narrow nostrils and a number of eye conditions that cause chronic irritation and pain. Its deformed spinal bones that can also lead to incontinence and the loss of the use of its back legs.
Attempts have been made by some breeders to improve the animal's’ health.
However, a study published in the journal of Canine Genetics and Epidemiology found this would be difficult to do from the existing gene pool because it has been inbred to an extreme degree.
The lead author of the paper, Professor Niels Pedersen, said: “The English bulldog has reached the point where popularity can no longer excuse the health problems that the average bulldog endures in its often brief lifetime.
“More people seemed to be enamoured with its appearance than concerned about its health.
“Improving health through genetic manipulations presumes that enough diversity still exists to improve the breed from within, and if not, to add diversity by outcrossing to other breeds.
“We found that little genetic 'wiggle room' still exists in the breed to make additional genetic changes.”
The breed began from just 68 individuals sometimes after 1835 and has experienced artificial genetic bottlenecks created by breeders to produce a supposedly desirable appearance.
Professor Pedersen, of the University of California, said the rate of genetic changes had been “particularly rapid over the last few decades”.
“Breeders are managing the little diversity that still exists in the best possible manner, but there are still many individuals sired from highly inbred parents,” he said.
“Unfortunately eliminating all the mutations may not solve the problem as this would further reduce genetic diversity.
“We would also question whether further modifications, such as rapidly introducing new rare coat colours, making the body smaller and more compact and adding more wrinkles in the coat, could improve the bulldog's already fragile genetic diversity.”
The study was the first time DNA analysis has been used to assess the English bulldog’s genetic diversity.
Breeders in Switzerland have started to cross the English bulldog with the Olde English Bulldogge – ironically an American breed – to create what is called the Continental Bulldog, which they hope will be healthier.
But this has proved controversial in the dog breeding world, with some believing this dog will no longer be a true English bulldog.
I have watched this coming since I was born..."Designer Dogs*".
*Than again, aren't ALL dogs Designer ("Designer" being Human intervention) Dogs? Some to go in holes, some to bird, some to swim, some to protect. Seeing a natural instinct, and trying to intensify that instinct through breeding?
Isn't it strange that after a bombing, everyone blames the bomber, his upbringing, his environment, his culture, his mental state but … after a shooting, the problem is the gun?
Definition of a home owner, "see the door threshold, without my permission, there and no futher.......
My Uncle Frank was a staunch Conservative and voted straight Republican until the day he died in Chicago. Since then he has voted Democrat. Shrug
*Than again, aren't ALL dogs Designer ("Designer" being Human intervention) Dogs? Some to go in holes, some to bird, some to swim, some to protect. Seeing a natural instinct, and trying to intensify that instinct through breeding?
You should insert the word 'domestic' in there somewhere. In nature (feralism) canines will not care which male breeds which female and the result is a hodge podge of offspring even within a single litter, since canines can and do bear young from multiple males within the same mating cycle. This kind of breeding is referred to as using terminal sires--males that produce offspring that offer a variety of traits due to an expaned genetic pool. Take that away, and breed only 'the best to the best' time after time, litter after litter and we arrive where we are now with the bulldog. Because domestic dogs are bred to please humans, the gene pool is limited because 'people' are using maternal sires instead of terminal sires. Maternal means they are throwing pups that are genetically and phenotypical of the single sire and dam, as well as those parent's sire and dam. Inbreeding or linebreeding. Virtually no heterosis. There's an old saying that always applied to any breed carrying a lot of different genetic material traits. "there is more genetic variation within a breed than between breeds!". For Bulldogs, that's no longer true, because anything deemed 'undesirable' was bred out of the breed, and even tho there has always been a puppy or 2 in the high pedigree line that was an outlier, those were either sold off as not being breedstock or euthanized as soon as the undesirable traits were recognized. No matter how high the breeding, occasionally nature throws a curve and in this case, a puppy will come into the world with less wrinkle and/or more nasal opening. A natural mutation. Undesirable by current standards, but those are the ones they need to be using as seedstock to bring the breed back in order to decrease the health problems. There are 3 ways out of this. 1. Crossbreeding with the breed mentioned in the article. When the desired results are met, stop and it becomes not a crossbreed but a composite breed. As article states, that has already been met with dismay as not being true to breed. 2. Retaining the outliers as stated above, and begin to breed better traits back into the breed. 3. Don't know if we are there yet in technical ability, but genetic modification or genetic engineering may be the way to go.
As far as the composite breed goes, we already see this in nature. There is only one true wolf species in America, and that is the Gray wolf. The southern red wolf and the Eastern wolf are composite breeds--Gray wolves interbred with coyotes. https://www.washingtonpost....rue-species-of-wolf/
[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 07-29-2016).]
I got news for you Boonie, all pure breed dogs have their own set of problems, because of human intervention. Look up any breed 's hereditary breed problems and they all come up with,
Hip dysplasia, eye problems, knee problems, and many more, it is mans intervention trying to get the best of the best of the best that caused these problems by line breeding, a fancy way of saying mom to son, dad to daughter, and all the rest , simply from human intervention. To get what man thinks is the best traits. But with those best traits they bring with them other problems, because of people wanting something from the dogs.
They have done it to German Shepard's, golden retrievers, labs, if it's a pure breed humans have done it to them. like with everything humans do trying to make something better they screw them up, this has been going on for century's to get the dog to look the way humans want.
Steve
------------------ Technology is great when it works, and one big pain in the ass when it doesn't
I got news for you Boonie, all pure breed dogs have their own set of problems, because of human intervention. Look up any breed 's hereditary breed problems and they all come up with,
Hip dysplasia, eye problems, knee problems, and many more, it is mans intervention trying to get the best of the best of the best that caused these problems by line breeding, a fancy way of saying mom to son, dad to daughter, and all the rest , simply from human intervention. To get what man thinks is the best traits. But with those best traits they bring with them other problems, because of people wanting something from the dogs.
They have done it to German Shepard's, golden retrievers, labs, if it's a pure breed humans have done it to them. like with everything humans do trying to make something better they screw them up, this has been going on for century's to get the dog to look the way humans want.
Steve
Yup. For a long time. You can pick most any breed, and there are unintended health issues that are a result of many years of careful inbreeding, done just to achieve "the look". I'm tempted to blame the AKC and their "breed standards" (as if...) but they're not totally to blame.
I wonder if human inbreeding is effecting some issues with some segments of the population..
It is (or was) a much speculated problem within the blue blood royalty of Europe and Great Britain.
In this country? Not likely--even in Arkansas. But I am reminded of what Jeff Foxworthy once said...... If you go to a relative's funeral to meet women, you might be a redneck
[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 07-30-2016).]
