3 ms·
Which is why humans are very sensitive to interbreeding
by jokoon 3y ago
Which is why humans are very sensitive to interbreeding
- roncesvalles 3y agoBy sensitive to interbreeding do you mean that's the reason why humans can't have offspring with other apes? Curious to know how this is implied by a genomic bottleneck.
- trane_project 3y agoI think they meant incest. If we already did our share of it in the distant past, then fun with your cousin leads to a baby with a pig's tail. Or at least it did for the Buendía family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude
- daliusd 3y agoThat’s not the case everywhere IMHO. E.g. marrying cousins is kind of norm in some countries
- joe__f 3y agoI've read that it was encouraged in ancient Egypt
- Auracle 3y agoAncient? "As of 2016, about 40% of marriages in Egypt were between cousins." https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Global_prevalence_of_consanguinity.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Global_p... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_...
- fireant 3y agoFirst time hearing about this. I'm surprised the whole region isn't massively degenerated after centuries of traditional incest. The numbers are pretty staggering
- Auracle 3y agoI've heard it argued that it could be the reason the middle east is the way it is now as opposed to the world's hub of scientific discoveries and great culture that is used to be. However, that's racist-adjacent so I doubt there's any actual research or scientific basis for it. They certainly have much higher rates of genetic diseases. As noted in that Wikipedia article: "While babies of Pakistani heritage accounted for roughly 3.4% of all births in the UK (2005), "they had 30% of all British children with recessive disorders and a higher rate of infant mortality," according to research done by the BBC.[46]"