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Yeah, from what I've read Collies are a smarter breed and also vary in intelligence amongst themselves. High obedience has been shown to at times be counter to
by Vetch 5y ago
Yeah, from what I've read Collies are a smarter breed and also vary in intelligence amongst themselves. High obedience has been shown to at times be counter to good test performance as it means lower curiosity, higher dependence on humans and lower problem solving persistence. Collies are curious, enjoy learning and having a job but can be chaotic when bored, which is markedly different from incurious obedience.
> This breed doesn't suffer health problems due to inbreeding, because it isn't a (UK) Kennel Club breed
The paper aligns with what you say, it remarks that Collies are highly inbred but not suffering that much from it. Can you explain the significance of not being a Kennel Club breed? Can that be the whole story, though?
> There were interesting exceptions to the correlation of inbreeding and health. The Border terrier, Basenji, Collie, and English setter breeds have high inbreeding but low morbidity. Likewise, the Malinois, Pomeranian and Russian Tsvetnaya Bolonka (Russian Toy) have lower inbreeding and high morbidity. These example breeds are neither brachycephalic nor particularly known for extreme morphologies.
> In the case of healthy breeds with high inbreeding, it may be possible that these breeds have been purged of deleterious alleles as has happened with inbred mouse strains
> In the opposite situation, the recorded morbidities could be high allele frequency Mendelian diseases or potentially conditions linked to phenotypes under selection in the breed. These discrepancies could also exist due to population differences between the insurance data and the inbreeding data.
- denton-scratch 5y ago> Can you explain the significance of not being a Kennel Club breed? Well, the Kennel Club rates breeds in terms of their conformance to "spec", which is a lot about appearance. Inevitably, breeders breed to the spec. Border Collies aren't bred to any spec. (Collies are a different breed, which I believe is rated by the Kennel Club)
- a-saleh 5y agoYeah, I have seen a working dog Collie compared to a bred-for-beauty-constests Collie and they could be considered two distinct breeds
- spfzero 5y agoThat's also true for English Sheppards; they are bred for temperament, not conformance to appearance rules. So they don't all look identical, but they are great companions (and good at herding).