Winner of the 2010 World's Ugliest Dog Contest was this inbred Chihuahua.
The series continues at BorderWars.
We just don’t know how many diseases dogs could potentially have.
I don’t think the domestication process and the years of rather hard times with us have culled that many deleterious recessives away. If anything, they have meant that natural selection no longer acts upon dogs, and these recessives can continue to exist.
Genetic disorders caused by deleterious recessives are not rare. One study found that one in four AKC dogs had some sort of genetic disease or defect.
That’s much higher than it is among humans.
If the brilliant Bruce Cattanach had said the same thing about Syrian hamsters, I would be in total agreement. Syrian hamsters have almost no genetic diseases, and the ones available on the pet market are all derived from a single female and her litter that were captured near Aleppo in the 1930’s.
Oh dear that poor dog. How does it walk? Those legs look monstrous.
Look at the back.
The dog was going to be put down because of it’s health issues until it’s current owner ‘rescued’ it (perhaps sensing the potential for winning $$ in this horrible contest). I’m not sure that was such an act of mercy, to be honest.
It looks much more like a deformed Italian Greyhound.
Issues like that, if present from birth, are more usually due to a teratogen during gestation than inbreeding.
That’s what I thought, too, until I read what the contest vet said about it.
http://www.news24.com/World/News/Chihuahua-takes-ugliest-dog-title-20100626
It reminds me of the very inbred, “throwaway” white tigers.
Oh, please. Most people who know nothing about inbreeding will make those kinds of garbagey statements. Without the pedigree you cannot know. A while back there was a Chi in a shelter that had no front legs, and immediately the shelter blamed it on inbreeding. Nonsense. That is a classic teratogen problem.
You don’t get gross deformities due to inbreeding UNLESS there are heritable genetic defects that will produce such deformities present in the parents. Like cleft palate, or spinal issues. I have seen inbred populations of feral cats several times that have have tail/spinal deformities. Obviously there was a gene for that in the population and inbreeding brought it to light.
Inbreeding generation after generation is far more likely to produce immune system defects and sterility than deformity.
The main issue this dog has is a spinal deformity…
French bulldog with same spinal deformity.