#like the genetic deformity from inbreeding

[monkeydlesbian]

why does dream have the habsburg jaw

#like the genetic deformity from inbreeding #HELPPPP

[rise-my-angel]

Heres the rub: Mirri Maz Duuri is not responsible for what happened to Drogo or Rhaego. She was very clear that Drogo was going to die from his wounds. She gave specific instructions which Drogo didn't listen to, and the result is naturally his wound getting infected passed the point of curing. Drogo was already going to die, so nothing that happens to him is Mirris fault.

Rhaego though, I contest the idea that Mirri did anything to him to intentionally and maliciously kill a child. Clearly Mirri understood that Rhaego would be the price for Drogo, but first, that is Danys fault for asking absolutely no more questions on the matter once Mirri clarified it would not be Danys life as the price. As soon as she learned she was not to die, she clearly considered any other life not worthy of question. Mirri distinctly warns her multiple times of the danger and price of the blood magic she is demanding Mirri perform, but does not ask her to clarify what any of those warnings mean beyond her own life.

But here's the thing, when Mirri tells Dany what Rhaego looked like when he was born, this is not the first time a Targaryean woman has given birth to a highly deformed stillborn. Rhaenyra was said to have given birth to an equally as deformed child, and while some of this can be chalked up as exaggerations, history also tells us that real life babies born from massive degrees of inbreeding were born with highly unusual deformities.

Rhaego might have been alive inside Dany but that does not mean that he would've gone on to be a viable live birth, or even really go on to survive infancy.

So if the dying Drogos life is traded for the barley alive Rhaego, it explains why neither life really made it. The situations would have ended up the same if Dany never ordered Mirri to perform the spell. Drogo would die from injuries and Dany would've go on to birth a highly deformed, barley alive Rhaego who likely wouldn't have survived due to the extreme nature of his birth defects.

Targaryean women have a very concerning track record of fertility issues. Danys own mother suffered 8 miscarriages and stillbirths before having a living child and then died giving birth to her next. Fertility and stillbirth is a rampant issue amongst these women due to the abhorrent effects of generational inbreeding.

Drogo was always going to die from his injuries, and Rhaego was never going to survive being born from a mother with such damaged genetics.

But because Dany ordered her to do this, she can claim it was Mirri who caused this.

"When your womb quickens again and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before."

Isn't some prophetic vision or warning or confession. Its Mirri telling Dany that Drogo will never be as he once was, because it is as possible as Dany giving birth to a living child. It's her saying that Mirri cannot promise he will come back because she cannot promise the impossible.

Even if Mirri did all of this on purpose, which we do not know because Dany burns her alive before finding out with any true certainty, it doesn't matter.

Drogo and Rhaego were never going to survive anyways. But Mirri gets blamed, because we are fooled into thinking Danys pov is her being a reliable narrator, and she tells us Mirri is to blame and then burns her alive before the audience has a chance to question that position.

Mirri isn't a child murderer. The effects of rampant incestual inbreedings on hereditary genetics is Rhaegos killer.

#game of thrones #a song of ice and fire #asoiaf #anti daenerys targaryen #anti dany stans #anti targaryen #anti targ stans #mirri maz duur #mirri maz duur did nothing wrong

[despazito]

The Nenetskaya Laika or Nenets herding laika is a landrace reindeer herder from northern Russia kept by several indigenous peoples. In the 1890s the Norwegian Fram expedition to the antarctic purchased 33 nenets dogs for their journey, and the white surviving dogs became the foundation stock for the modern Samoyed breed.

Many dog breeds have a breed mythos that is varying degrees of truths and some almost completely fictitious to explain where the breed came from, what it does, and why they look the way they do. I think it flatters some people’s egos to imagine they own a piece of history. For instance I think the Shih Tzu or Pekingese becomes more appealing once you explain that they were bred by imperial royalty. Particularly egregious examples are the myths like bloodhounds and bassets having long dragging ears to "pick up" a scent, or that excessive 20th century wrinkling on the bulldog was somehow useful in bull baiting.

The Samoyed story is mostly true, the Nenets and Samoyed people do rely on these dogs for herding and companionship, but if you're imagining the large plush white dogs you see in the suburbs you're being a bit misled. This disconnect wouldn't matter if it weren't for the breeders espousing the breed myth as sacred text to justify purity above all else for breed preservation. But the dogs they are preserving are so often completely different from the dogs written about in the origin stories! It's the Nenets people of the 21st century who are more closely preserving the true spirit and image of the historic Samoyed dog.

So many breeds in their current state were invented by the kennel clubs then retroactively labeled as unchanged for hundreds of years. The Saint Bernard as we know it now is another good example of a kennel club fabrication.

After a century of pedigree breeding with a small founder population the Samoyed has an inbreeding coefficient nearing 30% (Dreger et al 2016) despite the UK KC listing 8.5% (because they measure COI by reading registered pedigree ancestry instead of genetic testing). 12% of tested dogs were heterozygous for the mutation linked to enamel hypoplasia. They're still pretty healthy dogs, but again it could be better.

Similar dogs from the same family and region get repeatedly subdivided up into separate, smaller groups who are then banned from mixing outside their small gene pool. Compound it with bottlenecks, overrepresented sires, and the sterilization of most offspring, and you're left with a gradual loss of diversity and an accumulation of deleterious mutations. This is why even purebred dogs who don't have exaggerated physical deformities still have higher rates of many hereditary disorders.

Selective breeding can be very useful and you can selectively breed for healthier dogs, but the overwhelming majority of dog breeders put more weight on either breeding for looks or obeying artificial parameters set on gene pools than breeding for welfare and long-term breed health.

  -The Invention of the Modern Dog: Breed and Blood in Victorian Britain

[maddyshome]

we dont have information about the gojou family except gojou satoru BUT i think gojou satoru is most likely a result of inbreeding. noww i think we all can connect dots and admit that incest in the jujutsu society is not such a forbidden thing. naoya himself was planning to marry mai. and they are family.

so what i think is that in the jujutsu society, to keep their bloodline "pure" and to guarantee the birth of a sorcerer, they are basically sleeping with each other.

the birth of a child that is capable of raising the family own status and power in their society. someone powerful enough to have a similar technique and ability with the rest of the family (like six eyes). wouldnt it make sense that members of the same family, who genetically are prone to develop a similar ability, are sleeping with each other to increase the possibility of a six eyes + limitless user?

we knowww the zenins do this so why wouldnt the other families do the same?

so yes, i think the strongest is the result of inbreeding.

i think sukuna himself could have been the result of inbreeding too. a cursed child that was born out of incest. but his case was a failure, not like gojou's. so he was said to be cursed because he was weak. and we know that kids born out of incest sometimes are born deformed too. so he was a failed creation and gojo satoru was a successful creation

wouldnt this make the whole "sukuna is beautiful" thing so very bizarre? if cursed energy is created from negative feelings, pain hatred and so on, wouldn't this mean that this is true jujutsu? suffering, what sukuna talks about. so people that suffered know what true jujutsu is. unlike people who were born blessed with power.

so what makes sukuna beautiful? is it his mastery over jujutsu, the true jujutsu? after all it makes sense that a being that was cursed from birth to be a master of jujutsu. like a machine of pain. since jujutsu itself is suffering.

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen #gojo satoru #sukuna

[wilderun]

I often hear that wolfdogs are a modern fad, but in reality, wolfdogs in the USA have a long and deep-running history. Here is a little about wolfdogs of the last 100 years.... McCleery Wolf Ranch -- A breeder who acquired wolves in 1921 during government culls, and created a line of wolves and wolfdogs, passed along for several generations, of which the last remaining descendants now reside at Wolf Haven’s McCleery Ranch facility. 

IOWOLFER -- A wolfdog organization and pedigree tracking/verification registry created in 1979 that supported responsible wolfdog ownership and breeding practices. This organization was ran by Suzanne Smith, a wolfdog and wolf breeder who worked to try and outcross the arctic lines to get away from the jaw malocclusion that was in the line. IOWOLFER held rendezvous and shows ever year where wolves and wolfdogs and their owners could mingle and evaluate animals and work together on projects. IOWOLFER spearheaded issues like correcting percentages on lines that had been misrepresented such as the Gordon K Smith line, lobbying for rabies vaccine approval for wolfdogs, fighting against anti-ownership laws, and public education. 

Fur Farms -- The Davidson Fur Farm operated in the 70-90′s that bred and sold puppies into private ownership. Later, he bred a line of 50% F1 and 75% F2 Norwegian Elkhound/wolf crosses. Many wolfdog lines descend from animals from fur farm facilities like this one. Davidson often traded animals with facilities that operated in the 60′s-90′s, such as Don Garrett, Rod Twitto and Harold Matz, other fur farms at the time that also sold to private ownership. 

Bear Country USA -- This was a drive through zoo opened in 1972 and is still in operation today, although no longer has quite the same caliber of wolf as they used to. Many lines of wolfdog today trace back to their wolves or animals from other zoos such as the Folsom Zoo. This is an ‘end line’ facility, because, as far as I am aware, no one is quite sure where they sourced their original wolves from. 

Rick Halvorson -- Rick Halvorson acquired a pair of pure arctic wolves from Aqualand via an auction, and another animal from Stanley Park Zoo, back in the 70's. These animals came from several generations of inbreeding at the zoos, tracing back to (to my understanding) a full sibling pairing of wild caught arctic wolves. People who acquired Halvorson arctics proceeded to inbreed them as well, to maintain the arctic genetics. Pure arctics started to have severe jaw and skull deformities due to the extensive inbreeding. Crossing to other wolf subspecies such as C. l. Hudsonicus was done, along with crosses to dog (including, most famously, great pyreneese crosses). The last few pure arctics from the Halvorson line ended up in sanctuary after a breeder who was trying to preserve them passed away, and are now deceased due to old age with the exception of a single 17.5yo female. 

--

Below are a collection of old advertisements from the Wolf Hybrid Times and other newsletters, where established kennels could list advertisements in. While none of these breeders are active any longer and contact information was removed for privacy purposes, descendants of kennels like these are what makes up the vast majority of multi-generational wolfdogs in North America (and even overseas in Europe!) today.  Unfortunately, due to the secrecy that has arisen around lineage on wolfdogs in the last 2 decades or so and certain breeders who won’t give out pedigrees or give false information, a lot of modern wolfdog owners don’t have their animals’ pedigrees tracing back as far as it actually could go, into the 60′s in many cases. 

For further information about wolfdogs:

  https://texaswolfdogproject.org/resources/owning-a-wolfdog 

 https://runningwithwolfdogs.com/

https://www.wolfdogbehaviorist.com/

http://www.floridalupine.org/

#wolf #wolves #wolfdog #wolf hybrid #wolfdog education #wolfdog history

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

Question from someone curious about snake breeding - is inbreeding a problem with snakes? Like, is breeding a snake to a sibling or back to a parent unhealthy or more likely to cause physical or mental issues for snakes? I've considered getting into snake breeding if I can afford to do so but I wouldn't wanna do anything weird and unhealthy with it

Inbreeding is super common in reptile breeding circles, and in general it's not as harmful as it is with mammals but it should still be kept to a minimum.

Snakes are usually bred back to a parent or sibling to test if genes they're visual for are dominant, recessive, or even inheritable at all. As long as this isn't done for multiple generations, the hatchlings will have no ill effects. If linebreeding continues for more than a couple generations, that's when we start seeing an increased chance of genetic deformities - bug eyes are super common in inbred snakes. Snakes tend to have small overlapping ranges in the wild, and they're built for a bit of inbreeding, but genetic diversity is still important so it's best to avoid inbreeding unless you have a very good reason.

#not a rating #snake breeding

[random-thought-depository]

Hi longtime lurker first time asker , I remember you said starlight looked a bit funny to humans and wondered if she also looks a bit funny to vampires, since Homo sapiens probobly  look like clumsy potato faced shortarse’s to them (although maybe the softer facial bone structure and smaller ears read as slightly neonatous and we end up as ugly cute)   Although thinking about it given their lack of interest in art and wider aesthetics would vampires even have a notion of ugliness/attractiveness anyway that wasn’t just a straight statistical calculation of features correlating to useful survival traits.

Hi! Thanks for your interest!

She definitely would! She has human features like round immobile ears and eyes with white sclera that would definitely distinguish her from vampires, and she's intermediate between humans and vampires in things like jaw and tooth structure and facial structure. She also has more symmetrical facial features than vampires, because ancient humans had more symmetrical facial features than ancient vampires because ancient vampires were never a very healthy species genetically (the vampires of Stargazer's era were already suffering borderline mutational melt-down and significant inbreeding depression). To a vampire her half-human parentage would also be very obvious by her slow reflexes and poor coordination, her scent (especially during menstrual bleeding), the pace of her breathing and heartbeat, and the way she non-verbally broadcasts her emotions like a human (e.g. showing visible signs of distress when upset).

Aside: I think ancient vampires having high facial asymmetry might have done a lot to make them look creepier to humans; it'd have made them look low-key deformed and twisted. They probably had had a lot of minor deformities too, for the same reason as the high facial asymmetry. Modern vampires probably got a lot of that damage fixed in the process of re-creating them and don't have this.

I'm not sure if ancient vampires would have had a notion of personal physical beauty in exactly the sense we think of it, but I think they would have had a notion of sexiness corresponding to features that would indicate being likely to produce offspring likely to thrive in the ancient vampire society/lifestyle. Some of it would overlap with human ideas of beauty (e.g. facial symmetry), but a lot of it would have been based on scent, taste of various body fluids and oils (remember Valerie tasting Bruks for cancer in Echopraxia?), and speed and grace of movement. The last thing made humans (and half-humans like Stargazer) very unsexy to vampires, they took one look at our slowness and clumsiness and instantly (correctly!) diagnosed that if they reproduced with us the resulting offspring would have serious sensorimotor disabilities by vampire standards, and that was a factor in maintaining the relative reproductive isolation of the two species (roughly symmetrical to how vampire sociopathy and people-eating made vampires unattractive to most humans and maintained their reproductive isolation from that end).

#project Blampire fanfic

[tuhbanbuv]

Racism and homo/transphobia is literally an idiotic and uneducated point of view because the human race would benefit from a more community-driven and genetically varied environment.

Oh, and aro/aces fit too, as they usually don't have kids like an amount of other queer and cis people do because it's literally the most natural population control. No government-mandated child murder or 2 child rule. Nope. Just approve of people not wanting kids. Oh, and proper sex education for ones that do, as sex education reduces child abuse by A LOT.

In fact, the views of the "perfect" race by Nazis and Hitler himself would literally result in inbreeding and weak constitutions. Ever heard of the Habsburgs, or the main man, Charles II of the Habsburg family? Here's some quotes from the man's autopsy and medical records:

"...heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water." "He suffered from a range of ailments extending beyond the well-known Habsburg jaw, including developmental delay, intellectual disability, dysarthria, skeletal deformity, recurrent infections, epilepsy and infertility, among others."

TLDR: Racists and bigots are literally dumb as fuck.

[anthonykittenshome]

The Scottish Fold Cat: All You Need To Know

If you're looking for an affectionate, caring and beautiful breed of cat to add to your family, look no further than the Scottish Fold Kittens for Sale South Africa. With a prestigious heritage and a lifetime of pleasure for your family, this breed is a perfect addition to a cat-loving household and it easily provides a lifetime of enjoyment, fulfillment and affection.

Breed History The Scottish Fold, named for its peculiar yet adorable folded ears, was first noticed in 1961 by a Scottish Shepherd. He took notice of a cat on a neighboring farm because of its "folded" ears - a birth trait that is made possible by a dominant gene within the cartilage of the ears - creating a folded, shortened appearance. As the shepherd continued to investigate, he realized that the breed was not formerly known. When he adopted a "folded" cat from his neighbor's litter and later produced two "folded" kittens himself, he attempted to gain recognition for the breed but encountered resistance. The breed was officially recognized by the CFA in 1973, later receiving the coveted champion status in 1978.

Characteristics The ears of a Scottish Fold cat fold down and forwards but the ears remain fully functional. They're able to tilt and swivel in a typical feline fashion - and can even be laid flat against the head when expressing anger. The gene that causes this unique fold is a dominant trait. In order to produce Scottish Fold offspring, at least one parent must have a unique folded ear. Scottish Fold interbreeding leads to an increased chance of skeletal deformities. Like all other breeds of cats, continually inbreeding produces a higher chance of genetic problems that can lead to more serious medical conditions throughout the life of the cat.

Potential Breed ProblemsWhen Scottish Folds are interbred, they have a high likelihood of skeletal problems as well as an increased risk for congenital osteodystrophy which enlarges and distorts the underlying bone structure. If your cat exhibits difficulty in moving or unusual density of the bones, you will need to have your cat checked by a certified veterinarian. This often presents itself as an unusual thickness in the tail or the legs.

While all old cats eventually acquire trait-specific folded ears, they are not born that way. Scottish Fold kittens were originally born with straight ears. The fold appears about 3-4 weeks after birth. The unusual and characteristic fold can also lead to almost-inevitable ear problems such as increased wax buildup or dirt. Cats are also just as likely to have problems with ear mites as other cat breeds, and owners should watch carefully for signs of an ear infection due to improper or irregular cleaning. While early cat bred studies led researchers to believe that old cats were susceptible to deafness, this is no longer thought to be true.

Personality Scottish Folds are easily adaptable to new or changing environments. They are typically very sweet, affectionate and loving. They are not very vocal, and tend to be extremely quiet and observant animals. While they will demonstrate affection towards multiple people, they do have a tendency to single out one family member and bond with them exclusively on a deeper level. They love attention, but don't want to be forced into it. They want to choose when to receive attention, and they will often go to their "chosen" human to receive it - becoming almost like a shadow to the one person that they uniquely bond with. Scottish Folds are highly intelligent and curious animals that like to explore in a safe environment where they feel loved and protected.

While they appreciate a close relationship with their family and others, they aren't incredibly fond of being held and they certainly can't be classified as "clingy" or "whiny". They'd much prefer to sit next to you while you go about your daily activities rather than being held on a lap or in your arms. They are also incredibly playful and can easily learn to play fetch or play with other cat toys. Their playful and inquisitive nature will continue throughout their lifetimes, and it's not likely to dissipate once they reach adulthood.

Caring for the Scottish Fold Folds, especially long-haired breeds, need to be regularly maintained in order to achieve maximum health. They need to be regularly brushed - at least once a week. Their ears also need to be regularly cleaned and examined for wax build up or ear mites. Scottish Fold Kittens for Sale South Africa need to be washed occasionally with a good, high-quality cat shampoo. Their diet needs to be high in nutrients like vitamins and protein. The most important aspect of caring for a Scottish Fold is to be sure to shower them with lots and lots of love, exercise and playful affection.

#Scottish Fold Kittens for Sale South Africa

[fizziepopangel]

Wrong Turn (2021, Horror)

While I wasn't aware that there was another Wrong Turn installment, I believe this is a was a kind of continuation of the Wrong Turn series. For anyone who isn't familiar with the Wrong Turn movies, the movies all six movies are based around a family of inbred cannibals. In this case, I don't believe there's much evidence of cannibals outside of a single scene set very, very late in the movie, so I'm not quite sure if this really has much to do with the original series... Either way, I watched it and now I wanna talk about it, so let's get into it.

I want to start off by saying that the movie had a solid plot in my opinion. I mean, was a bit cliched in the sense that the story centers around three couples hiking in the Appalachian Mountains and despite seemingly harmless idea of their hike, they are warned by locals in the town they're staying in while hiking that they need to stay on the marked trail because there are dangers within the forest.... And of course, being young and dumb, the group chalks these warnings up to ramblings from a town of hillbillies, and they do end up straying from the path. Anyone who has seen a horror movie and has even a quarter of a braincell could've told you that they wouldn't stay on the path, so it wasn't all that original in that sense of things, just like anyone who has seen the original Wrong Turn series could tell you that there would be a lot of traps set for the purpose of hunting, and that a lot of those traps would involve some very pointy spikes. While I appreciated the gore that came from both of these decisions, I saw them coming based on my knowledge of the common sense of most people in horror movies and my prior knowledge of the series I believe this to be a part of. The real thing that was interesting to me was the hunters.

Now, as I previously mentioned, the original Wrong Turn series featured a family of inbred cannibals. For anyone who doesn't know how inbreeding happens, the technical meaning of it is when breeding happens between 2 closely related people or animals.... It tends to be what people call it when incest occurs over generations. On top of being plain icky, inbreeding can cause a whole host of issues in a person's genetic make-up because it increases the chances of the next generation to inherit genetic disorders. After generations of this, the people who are products of this can have physical deformities and mental disorders that drastically effect their quality of life. In the original series, the cannibals in question had been the product of generations of inbreeding that resulted in a host of issues ranging from things that seemed to effect their physical appearances to things that effected their communication abilities, leaving them to communicate in mainly animalistic grunts....

The 2021 take doesn't seem to have any of that. The hunters in this movie are actually villagers from a town called The Foundation that formed in 1859 before the war and the village inhabitants have no outright signs of inbreeding. Though they speak a different language and honestly appear to have a very cult-ish look, members of the village seem to be well spoken and don't seem to have any deformities or disabilities; when spoken to, the leader of the village even goes as far as telling the group of hikers that they have no cancer due to their way of life within the mountains. And despite the cannibalistic nature of those in the original movies, the villagers within this take hunt for game within the forest and burn the bodies of the dead rather than eating them. The village even has its own justice system that comes complete with a sort of prison where people are put for trespassing or stealing from the village community, and though we only get a glimpse of it, it seems to be filled with the outsiders who wandered into the forest and never wandered back out. I'm not gonna say that I disliked this change, but I did feel kinda cheated out of the classic cannibal aspect of the series.

Ok, so plot changes aside, I want to talk about the level of gore. I am a strong believer that there's never such a thing as too much gore as long as it's well done and doesn't subtract from the plot of the story being told. Gore is actually the biggest reason I enjoyed the original Wrong Turn movies, and honestly tends to play a big role in most of the horror movies I enjoy, but I will admit that I wasn't as focused on the bloody part of the 2021 take on Wrong Turn as I was on the plot and the changes I mentioned before, but there were still a few gorier scenes that definitely deserve some props for the makeup, prosthetics, and use of fake blood. It was extremely well done and started early enough to keep me entertained since we got to see the aftermath of an incident withing the first 20 minutes of the movie!

In all honesty, the biggest issue I had with this instalment was actually that I wished it ended more like my favorite instalment of the series, Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings.... If you know you know. Aside from that little note on the beginning, I actually quite liked the movie as a whole and would absolutely recommend this to someone looking for something good to watch, especially since the movie is different enough that it can be watched as a complete stand alone for anyone who isn't interested in the inbred cannibal bit of the series. It's a shoe in for my official recommendation list when it comes to horror movies and eared itself a solid 8/10

#fizziepop thoughts #movie review #horror fans #horror movies #horror #wrong turn #cannibals #movie poster #fizziepop recommended

[rise-my-angel]

I just recently got into the fandom. I was just wondering why you're not fond of Dany/ the Targaryeons? Gen no hate! Just curious. The incest between Dany & Jon does ick me out a lot. Thank you.

To start: I am against things that are pro incest in this series, so literally any family who exists on the backs of purposeful incest or any incestual couples are no go icky to me instantly. That being said, heres some word vomit:

A significant amount of it comes from a cruelty which stems from their superiority complex. Because of their Valyrian heritage, they believe that it makes them superior. In a very literal sense. Targaryeans are the most behind the curtain reveal of what it means to be the blood of Old Valyria. They believe that they are special, different then others, and they are above those which are not Valyrian. They are not outcasts in the sense of a Valyrian family which practices rampant incest.

Valyrians in general were incestual for those exact reasons. They believed that they were superior over other men, and thus keeping their bloodlines pure was integral to maintaining that special blood. It had made the Targaryeans very uncaring about lives not their own, and in truth it has made them so obsessed, that they don’t even care about each other.

No one suffers the damage of their inbreeding more then Targaryean women. They are born into that family expected to make themselves into wives and mothers for their brothers and uncles. It is an expectation that brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews marry. Imagine how it must feel to be a woman married INTO the Targaryean family, and suddenly your own daughters are expected to be made into brides for your own sons. This family raises their sons to expect their sisters to belong to them. Targaryean women are little more then breeders in the eyes of their own family. Their purpose is to be there to breed more children with their own brothers and uncles simply to keep that bloodline from being diluted with other kinds of people. And it hurts them in other ways, because inbred Targaryean women have very infamous fertility issues. They have a disturbing amount of miscarriages and stillbirths, they give birth to very physically deformed children, or mentally disturbed children. And Targaryean women die on in childbirth at an alarming frequency.

This is a result of generational incest. This extremely shallow gene pool being forced to inbreed over and over and thus the genetics get even more damaged over time, leading to more fertility issues, which leads to husbands putting their wives into medical distress trying to force them to get pregnant until they give birth to more sons and daughters. It is a hellish nightmare to be born a women in the Targaryean family, and its a massive reason why no one should ever be romanticizing these incestual relationships. There is a reason ONLY the Targaryeans inbreed like this in Westeros. It is demented, damaging, and disgusting to normal people.

But they don’t care, because they see themselves as superior beings with superior blood and they do not have respect for those they rule over because they are not special like they are. When the Targaryeans are not special. Being Valyrian is not special, because most of the known world looks back at them with resentment and hatred for their destruction and cruelty. Valyria was a blight on the world and the Targaryeans are desperate to inflict this onto the people of Westeros. Who by the way, are populated with three different cultures of people, two of which came from people who fled Essos to escape the Valyrian Freehold. And the Targaryeans came and forced that same trauma onto the very descendants of people who escaped that in the first place.

They are the living relic of Old Valyria and they are once more, a blight on the world they inhabit. Their motto of fire and blood is not cool or badass. It is the symbol of their purpose. To burn and destroy.

And Dany, is the biggest living character to exemplify that. She is a true Targaryean and that is not a compliment. It is a warning. She is dangerous, and violent and has no qualms with inflicting untold amounts of brutal cruelty to subjugate those she sees as in her way. That is not something to be idealized, she is a dangerous tyrant.

She also, is a bad ruler. She was NEVER raised with any sort of education or training to rule and she thinks she is good at it beacuse she knows how to scare people into submission. But her entire arc in the Slave Cities is one big showcase of why she should not have the power she demands. She is a bad ruler, she does not respect the cultures and people she demands bend the knee to her, she burns alive all those whom she alone decides deserves it. Even her plight of slavery isn’t good. She allows slaves to sell themselves back to their masters, because she did NOTHING to establish a system to fill for the void she created by taking slavery away in a culture where it is rampant.

Yes stopping slavery is good, but it is not as easy as making them stop doing it. She doesnt understand why as soon as she leaves places like Yunkai, do they devolve back into their old ways, because she wasn’t a ruler. She is a military occupier. She does not rule, she occupies by force until she decides she wants to move on. Everywhere she has touched, she has left behind chaos and ruin beyond what they were before she showed up. She does not accept criticism because to her, its an insult towards her perceived notion of do good.

She also has, what I personally hate, an insufferable ego. She is very egotistical to the point she thinks she is the worlds main character and every slight is a personal one against her. She has such an inflated sense of importance despite how often she fails and leaves ruin in her failing wake. She enjoys cruelty, she enjoys seeing her enemies burn alive or in horrible torture, she enjoys when people fear her, she enjoys knowing she could burn cities to the ground and thats why no one steps out of line.

Now, this all actually makes her interesting. Because it is. Following the story of a growing, evil, tyrant in the making is fascinating. But as a person, I hate her. She is everything I think good people, especially in this series, stand for and fight and sacrifice against. She is everything good people in this series fight so hard to protect the innocent from, but she enjoys that she is that.

The notion in certain realms of this fandom that she has always been this person trying to do good, is a falsehood. Its buying into the very message Dany is trying to tell people, when every single thing she actually does proves otherwise. She WANTS to burn and destroy. She WANTS to make people fear her and she WANTS to torture people in the most brutal fashions possible.

Now, obviously not all Targaryeans are bad people, but many are. Beacuse their entire family raises each other to exist and propagate this dangerous, damaging, and disgusting culture they’ve brought over from a place that the rest of the world is glad are gone. As long as a Targaryean lives by the ideals of fire and blood, they are doomed to die, because the world has decided they no longer will put up with it.

As for dragons, grrm has made it very clear that dragons in this series are the fantasy equivalent of atomic weapons. So you can image I find it baffling people think the literal one for one metaphor for nukes, are supposed to ever be seen as a force for good that deserves to exist.

Anyways sorry you’re new the fandom and found my blog, cus I imagine now you are hovering your finger over the block button like “block now or wait and see what other thousand word long rants shes got in her.”

Spoiler: the answer is too many.

#im gonna play it safe and not tag this one #cus it will definitly get me into trouble again

[pangur-and-grim]

Dear Greer, do you know if cats can be pigeon toed/duck footed? I’ve tried googling it but the only thing I can find is like, bow-legging or bone deformities. I just ask because my kitten has this weird stride with her lower back legs and when she loafs her feet stick out to the side, but her legs aren’t malformed and her pre adoption vet didnt put anything on her chart about it. She doesn’t have issues or anything walking or jumping so I’m not gonna traumatise her with a vet visit over something that doesn’t bother her but I’m just curious if this is A Thing, yknow? Apparently she DOES have a chest deformity so maybe her bones are just a lil funky from being a genetic circle street kitten?

Apologies for the paragraph, I hope you’re having a good day!

from what I know, a dash of inbreeding can give cats some pretty wacky legs (Jinx is an extreme example of that!), but @talesfromtreatment would know better than me about that

#my former neighbour had a cat with shortened forelegs and normal backlegs #it looked bizarre

[rainhadaenerys]

As a biology student, I get really annoyed when literally everyone in this fandom tries to talk about genetics and incest, because people really don't know what they're talking about. And this ignorance comes both from Dany antis trying to shit on Dany and from Dany stans trying to defend her. I think I finally got fed up with takes like "Dany should have a Hapsburg Jaw if ASOIAF was realistic", "Dany should have been deformed", "Targaryens should be inbred-looking" (whatever the hell that means) so I'm just going to talk about this here. NO. She didn't have to have a Hapsburg Jaw  or be deformed or sick for the genetics of ASOIAF to be realistic.

Here's the thing that people don't get: inbreeding doesn't cause any mutations. Mutations happen randomly in every human being (every living being, actually) as a result of mistakes in the replication of DNA, and it has nothing to do with whether a person has sex with their relatives or not. What inbreeding does is increase the chance of homozygosity. Homozygosity is when you have two copies of the same allele for a certain gene. In every human, every gene has two copies (unless you have some chromosomal disorder, but that's another thing entirely and also has nothing to do with incest; and unless we are talking about sex chromosomes or mitochondrial DNA), one copy that comes from the mother, and one that comes from the father. And these two copies can be either the same, or different copies. Let's suppose you have a certain gene that among the general population has five different alleles (a1, a2, a3, a4, a5). This means that a person can have all sorts of different combinations in this specific gene. A person could have one copy of a1 and one copy of a3. This would make them heterozygous in this gene, a person who has different alleles in a certain gene. A person who has one allele a2 and one a5 is also heterozygous. Meanwhile, if a person has two alleles of a1, we'd say that person is homozygous. And here's the thing: there's nothing wrong with homozygosity in itself. A person with two alleles a1 can be just as healthy as a person who has a1 and a2. To give an example: people with type O blood are homozygous. They have two copies of the recessive allele for the blood type O. But does this mean anything negative about their health? No. It's just a trait among many other traits that a person has.

Another important thing to know here are the concepts of dominant and recessive alleles. Some alleles will always manifest, even if there's only one copy of them. To give one example, type A blood is dominant. So if a person has an allele for type A and one allele for type O, that person will have type A blood. Meanwhile, type O is recessive, so it doesn't manifest unless it has two copies. For a person to have a type O blood, they need to have two copies of this allele.

So where does inbreeding come into this? Well, there are some recessive alleles (that can be caused by mutation, yes, but mutation is NOT caused by inbreeding) that can cause diseases. These diseases will only manifest if a person has two copies of this recessive allele, so if a person only has one, that person will still be healthy. What inbreeding does is to increase the chances of a person to have two copies of the same allele. So let's suppose a certain family carries the recessive allele r for a certain disease. People related to each other are more likely to also have the same recessive allele for this disease, so this increases the chance that their child will have two copies of that allele. To give a visual example, let's suppose two siblings, each carrying the r allele, have children. Here are the possible children they could have:

Parents: Rr x Rr

Possible children: RR, rR, Rr, rr

So this couple would have a 1/4 chance to have children with this disease (notice that the chance of having healthy children is still higher than the chance of having a sick child, so even with inbreeding, it's perfectly realistic for this couple to have only healthy children). Meanwhile, if they had had children with people who aren't related to them, the risk of having a sick child would be lower, because people unrelated to this family are not as likely to carry the same recessive allele for this disease.

But notice the key thing here: what incest does is to increase the chance of a person having two recessive alleles for a disease, but only IF this family actually carries an allele for a disease. If the family doesn't carry any recessive alleles for a genetic disease, they won't have any problems at all having children. Let's suppose these two siblings that have only the dominant R allele have children:

Parents: RR x RR

Possible children: RR, RR, RR, RR

In this case, this incestuous family would have a 100% chance of having healthy children for this particular gene.

And incest doesn't make it any more or less likely for a family to have recessive genetic diseases. Incest doesn't cause mutations. So if a family doesn't have any dangerous recessive alleles, that's not a problem. So no, it's not "unrealistic" that Daenerys and her siblings were healthy. It's not "unrealistic" that they don't have deformities. Quite possibly, the Targaryen family simply doesn't have any recessive genetic disease that could be made more likely to be expressed by incest.

I have also seen in the past takes like "the Targaryens shouldn't be able to reproduce anymore", and saying that "all these generations of incest should have killed off the Targaryens", and once again, no, this is wrong. Inbreeding would not have killed off the Targaryens, no matter how long it’s been going on. Inbreeding increases the odds for recessive genetic diseases. Let’s suppose the Targaryen family carries an allele for a lethal genetic disease. The only thing that happens is that the person that inherits this disease (the person that has two alleles for the disease) will die before having any children. This means that natural selection kills them, and they won't be able to pass this lethal allele forward. The Targaryen family can still continue through the other members of the family, people that don’t carry the lethal allele or people that only carry one copy. Yes, generally speaking, inbreeding is not good for health, but in a family that has been inbreeding for many years, natural selection would ALSO have eliminated alleles that are too prejudicial, and kept the good ones.

I've also seen people trying to argue "but Dany is the fruit of several generations of incest, so she should have some problem", and again, no. First of all, Dany is NOT the fruit of several generations of incest. She is the fruit of only 2 generations of incest. Even if all the Targaryen family had been incestuous and only married their siblings (which is not the case), all of that is cancelled by Aegon V and Betha's marriage. Let's suppose that Aegon V was very inbred (he actually wasn't, neither his grandparents nor his parents were siblings), and was homozygous for all of his genes. This is already a highly unrealistic situation, given that humans have around 30000 genes, and most of these genes have multiple alleles in the population, meaning that the chance of a person to be homozygous for every single one of them is almost nonexistent. But for the sake of this argument, let's suppose Aegon V is so inbred that he is homozygous for every single one of his genes. Let's suppose this is Aegon V (the genes are A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H):

aabbccddeeffgghh (obviously a real human being would have thousands of genes, but I'm only depicting 8 here for the sake of the example)

And this is Betha Blackwood:

AABbccdDEEFFggHh

If they had children, that already cancels out much of the homozygosity. This is one possibility for what a child of theirs might be like:

AaBbccddEefFggHh

Notice how a good part of the homozygosity is cancelled. Because a child is made of one allele that comes from the father and one that comes from the mother, so by the very definition, one generation is enough to "get rid" of the inbreeding, because each allele is coming from a different place. And notice that my example is a highly simplified one. In real life, most genes don't have just two alleles, most genes have several alleles spread among the population. A more realistic situation would be that Betha wouldn't have as many alleles in common with Aegon, so their children would actually be more heterozygous than this example I gave.

So Dany is not really the result of several generations of incest, She is the result of only 2: Jaehaerys and Shaera, and Aerys and Rhaella. This still means that there's plenty of variation in all genes. And Dany (or any other Targaryen) won't necessarily end up manifesting a recessive genetic disease, because: 1) for the Targaryens to manifest a recessive genetic disease, they must have one in the family in the first place. If the family doesn't have any recessive genetic disease, incest won't cause it, because incest only increases the chance of homozygosity; and 2) because even if the Targaryens DO have a recessive genetic disease, and even if both parents (who are siblings) carry a copy of this recessive allele for the disease, there's still a 3/4 chance that their children would be healthy, as shown by the first example above.

So, no, Dany (or any other Targaryen) being healthy and not deformed is NOT UNREALISTIC. It's perfectly possible considering real life genetics. So can Dany antis stop with the "Daenerys should be deformed", and can Dany stans stop defending Dany by saying that "ASOIAF is not supposed to be realistic when it comes to genetics", because lack of realism is not the reason Dany is healthy and not deformed, Dany being healthy and not deformed is not unrealistic, and I'm really tired of seeing misinformation about genetics being spread by literally everyone in this fandom. Also, if you're looking for unrealistic genetic elements in ASOIAF, you should be looking at things like the Baratheon's "seed is strong", not at Dany.

Also, even if Dany had a recessive genetic disease because of inbreeding, it wouldn't necessarily be a deformity, it could be any genetic disease among a myriad of genetic diseases, so Dany antis can stop with their "haha Dany should be deformed" bullshit.

By the way, before anyone accuses me of saying something I didn't say, I'm not saying inbreeding is not risky or dangerous. As I explained in this very post, inbreeding does increase the chance of your children manifesting a possibly hidden genetic disease carried by your family. What I'm saying here is that inbreeding is not the end of the world, it's not a guarantee that the children will indeed be sick, and there's still a higher chance that the children will be healthy, so Dany and her siblings being healthy is not unrealistic.

#asoiaf meta #daenerys targaryen #house targaryen #my meta

[esther-dot]

Targaryen inbreeding is problematic in more than one way:

1. The blood purity angle is meant to be disturbing to modern readers. After the eugenics of the early 20th century and the Nazis, there is no harmless way to interpret that.

2. The practice of incest left other houses unsatisfied and concentrated power solely in the “royal” family, while leaving them isolated in a political sense. Although we know they married other houses in the past, the current generation, Viserys, Rhaeghar and D@ny are the product of a brother-sister marriage.

3. Even though GRRM has not been consistent with Westerosi genetics (it’s fiction, people), he has made it clear that inbreeding manifests in mental health issues and more importantly...fertility issues. Although we could assume Rhaego’s deformities were a result of Mirri’s magic, there were other monstrous births before Rhaego (see Fire and Blood), so this could be a genetic syndrome caused by inbreeding.

This is poised to be a huge political issue because you cannot hold power in Westeros without a clear uncontested succession as the War of the five kings proves. If D@ny wins the throne but fails to have children she will not be able to hold her her kingdom together and her dynasty dies with her.

(continuation of this convo)

Everything you said!

Point 1 is what stops me cold each time.

Point 2 came up a lot with the Habsburgs from what I saw in that the degree to which they practiced incest was so much more extreme than others they had their obvious physical problems, yes, but also the political issues both of which were present in the Targ history.

Point 3: I haven’t read Fire & Blood, but I’ve seen quotes and it seems to me that Martin is doing some of his…writing backwards there to explain Rhaego’s form. I don’t think that was Mirri’s doing because of what was described in F&B. I assumed that was meant to be the result of inbreeding as you suggest, but I know there’s been spec about Targs literally having blood of the dragon hence the babies having tails etc. I thought that was just Martin’s own way of writing a malformed fetus with a condition people had no explanation for at the time. It reminded me of the way people with a condition like hypertrichosis were described as werewolves, but I don’t read Targ stuff so I don’t know if that spec is based on anything.

The mental health issues concern me because I really hate the “mad queen dany” idea and prefer conquerer Dany. I thought in both the show and the books that Dany couldn’t carry a healthy pregnancy due to her family’s incest. I assumed that because it seems weird to me that Martin would write so much incest into her family history without it impacting the canon era Targ (her), and the idea that she believes Mirri cost her Rhaego, that she believes in the mystical explanation although there’s a physical/real world one…that seemed probable to me.

Pregnancy difficulties is such a sensitive issue I understand why it’s distasteful to people that it would factor into things, but Martin is using it here to say something, as distressful as it may be. It could be as generic as pointing out the futility of conquering. Robert did it and was miserable, it won him nothing. So perhaps it’s a necessary part of showing how all the fighting is futile. What was lost (Lyanna for Robert, or the glory of House Targ/her family for Dany) will never be returned, no matter how many victories you win. A lot of people have written about how Dany’s quest to conquer Westeros is ultimately self-serving, not only because it’s about her becoming queen, but because for most of the series now, she’s accepted that she can’t have children. It isn’t about House Targ because there is no future for them. If that is the takeaway we’re meant to have, embedding that into her story this way is clever as the entire situation from her wedding to losing her child was traumatic, so we view all of this through an emotional filter rather than stepping back and understanding the other reality of her situation. I assume this will all hit pretty hard when she gets to Westeros and when confronted with family, the potential for her conquest to mean something for House Targ, to actually achieve something lasting, will be before her, she will go ahead and kill Aegon anyway. ☹️

#ask dot #< tag to filter if you don’t want to see these

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

Why does inbreeding not cause the same issues in reptiles that it does in mammals? Are there fewer dangerous recessive genes or something like that?

Hello hello - great question!

First, let me clarify a bit. When I talk about inbreeding in snakes not being as harmful as inbreeding in mammals, I'm talking about one-off pairings.

Inbreeding in snakes can quickly become harmful if one line of snakes is bred over and over for generations, or if snakes with genetic birth defects (like kinked spines, smaller/bigger eyes, etc) are bred together. Genetic diversity is always a good thing, and new genes should be introduced into breeding populations at every opportunity. Personally, I advise that every breeder avoid inbreeding as much as possible, but cases where it's best to linebreed to test out if a new pattern is genetic are always going to pop up.

That out of the way - the biggest reason inbreeding isn't a huge problem with snakes is because, well, it just happens all the time in the wild. Snakes don't usually travel very much during their lives, and overlap in the snake population just happens. This is one reason why localities of the same species can be so different from each other, and it actually helps wild snake populations more often than it harms. It's pretty rare for genetic deformities to be passed down through inbreeding. Venom makeup, slight size differences, and slight pattern differences are all examples of the advantages of occasional inbreeding in wild populations. It's just something snakes are used to.

#not a rating #snake genetics

[muraenide]

@mirrortold replied:  ... i am morbidly curious

I was reading about betta fish breeding. Apparently betta fish breeders have this practice on mix and matching betta fishes to get the right colours since people generally want fishes with ‘pretty colours’ from pet shops.

For that to happen they need to preserve certain traits. At first they’ll start a ‘new line’ (e.g. a red male and silver female) and, theoretically, from the genetic pool that is available the offsprings will have 3 possibilities: (1) red like dad (2) silver like mom, or (3) half red and half silver like dad x mom. This is generation 1, so the success rate of the offspring would be the highest.

However, not all of the offsprings would survive. If 1000 eggs were laid and the success rate is 5%, 50 fries survived from the batch, the breeder would reuse those 50 fishes to further breed. (Yes, inbreeding) because this is to achieve the desired colour that buyers from the pet shop want, to get the red/silver scheme colour back. If they want to breed unrelated fish, they’d have to find another silver, another red, or another silver/red which would be challenging and difficult. 

And if they used a fish with an entirely new colour (brown, for example), brown would look ugly when matched with red/silver. Too many colours would also make the fish look bad. 

However, inbreeding causes a higher chance of genetic mutation in the offspring, which would lead to more fries dying before they can achieve adulthood. If the fishes from generation 1 are reused for breeding, maybe this time the chances of survival would decrease to 4%, so out of 1000 eggs only 40 fries would survive, and the rest are eliminated, either dying of natural causes or taken out by the breeder. Since they only want the strongest fries to ensure its survival.

The cycle repeats, but apparently you can’t do that for more than 4~6 generations because the success rate of surviving fries would be incredibly low by then, and the breeder won’t get enough strong fries, so that line ‘ends’, and perhaps they pick out some fully red/fully silver fries from any of the previous generations and breeds that fish with another colour to start a new line.

And then now think about how Jade and Floyd are the only larvae to survive their batch.... 

The creepy part is if you imagine the same concept except on humans. Inbreeding is discouraged among humans because unlike fishes humans don’t give birth to 1000 babies at the same time. With fishes, it’s impossible for all their offspring to survive, but since humans don’t give birth to that many babies all at once, the chances of survival, even if genetically mutated due to inbreeding, is very high. Imagine 1000 human babies and some of them are deformed or incomplete (just like some frys!), and then gets eliminated for not being among the strongest in the batch.

#// animal kingdom continues to be dark 😂 #// there is also another part where fishes can recognise other fishes but most fishes can't recognise themselves #// but another day maybe ... 8^) #// The colours is only one example. #// the shape of the fish's tail or patterns are also among traits that breeders might want to preserve hence having to breed from the same #// pool of fishes #𖦹 ⋆꙳ ⁄ ooc.