4 ms·
as you go back in time, the tree of ancestors shrinks, so ultimately all cows in the world are descended from 2 cows, are they not?
by anewguy9000 7y ago
as you go back in time, the tree of ancestors shrinks, so ultimately all cows in the world are descended from 2 cows, are they not?
- jessriedel 7y agoYes, although that doesn't tell us much about whether this population has sufficient genetic diversity. https://xkcd.com/1545/ https://xkcd.com/1545/
- johnhenry 7y agoYes, but that's not the main issue -- it's that thousands (millions?) of other bulls who were around during the 50's and 60's didn't get to contribute to the gene pool leading to low genetic diversity. If there was some hidden defect in the Y chromosome that happen to affect both of them, that defect would not be in most bulls in existence.
- mirimir 7y agoIt's not that simple. If you look back far enough, "cows" are descended from perhaps multiple species of "not really cows, yet". And the same is true for all of those species. So you never get back to two of any one species.
- adrianN 7y agoWell, there is this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve