Saturday, January 16, 2016

Repopulation

I read this rather interesting article on saving endangered species, inbreeding, and repopulation of the Earth. It dealt with the question if two humans could repopulate Earth after a global disaster. Science gives some evidence. However, I would have wanted the authors to have written about dogs too. There have been a lot of dog breeding programmes to save endangered dog breeds. Indeed, Shibas were saved after the Second World War thanks to such a programme in Japan. If you want to study the saving of small populations, dog breeding would be the core subject, I would think. It could be that some dog breeds with a small genetic base would gain from being merged to each other. Why did the authors not consider dog breeds? I believe they were ignorant. The article was interesting, nevertheless.

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