ridecamp@endurance.net: Re: Endurance Bloodlines

Re: Endurance Bloodlines

Truman Prevatt (truman.prevatt@netsrq.com)
Thu, 15 May 1997 17:28:38 -0400

Natural selection took care of getting the best and most fit for survial.
Then man took over. Man is not quite as smart as mother nature and many
times what translates to "passing on desirable traits" is do so through
line breeding - which in fact probably passes on more bad traits (through
rescessive genes) than good traits. One could argue that out breeding of
healthy well conformed individuals would lead to better athletes than line
breeding for good athletes.

A good example of what can happen in a short time is the FL panther. Man
interfered by cutting down his territory and cutting it off form his
cousins in the west. 100 years ago the FL pather was a very viable breed.
Because of the limiting of the gene pool and the resulting line breeding
the FL panther is no longer a healthy animal (only about 50 still exist) -
in fact most of the native males are sterile.

The only hope is the introduction of outside genes to help improve the
species! This is being done by bring cougars from Texas.

I think we pay way too much attention to bloodlines. If I see a horse with
a lot of the same blood on his papers I am skeptical of what recessive
bombs are lying in wait.

Truman

Truman Prevatt
Mystic "The Horse form Hell" Storm with a lille hellion on the way
Danson "Deamon in Training" Flame
Sarasota, FL

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