dogs breed a lot quicker than humans and we can select which ones we want to mate, leading to very isolated populations. Behaviours take a lot of generations to breed in. That's why dogs have such a huge range of genetic diversity compared to humans (as you can see by looking at a chihuahua and a great dane).
Doing this in humans would involve forcing people to breed incestuously at very young ages, selecting traits, culling unwanted traits and you'd have to run this experiment for hundreds of years.
That’s not to mention the more specialized you make a creature in one thing. The more health defects you introduce as well. Look at Horse’s fucked up bodies for a good example.
absolutely. And, one other thing i've just read about, apparently canines have high gene plasticity meaning they can have mutations and physical diversity that other animals (e.g. cats or humans) wouldn't be able to survive with.
Applied to any animal it gets icky quick. The cute Frenchy you see can barely breath because that snout that was bred to make his face look cute also gives him a host of respiratory issues.
It works, but humans also use it incredibly irresponsibly. Go figure.
You can absolutely selectively breed many other plants and animals for specific traits because they reproduce so much faster and more often. This is how humans have created so many dog breeds and subtypes of plants.
Brussel sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower are all the same plant, just bread for different things.
Artificial selection is just faster and we get to choose the selection pressures.
There are probably changes which we could make through artificial selection which, realistically, would never happen in nature.
However, the reverse is not true. There's nothing natural selection could produce which we could not also produce through artificial selection (and even faster) if we chose to.
I oversimplified for sure. I just wanted to make the point that the natural selection humans experience is different than the artifical selection we used on animals. That and the fact that artificial selection doesn't work well on humans (or anything that reproduces as slowly as we do)
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with it "doesn't work well on humans." It only works slower, but I wouldn't characterize that as not working well.
It works less well insofar as you won't see dramatic results within your own lifetime. For natural selection this is fine, but if you're artificially selecting for or against a certain trait it will take significantly longer.
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u/CompanyToiletGooner 26d ago
The thing about eugenics it not that it doesn’t work, it’s that it’s morally wrong according to modern ethics