No I’m not a fascist (at least I hope not…)
I’m trying to understand why we’ve normalised the idea of eugenics in dogs (e.g. golden retrievers are friendly and smart, chihuahas are aggressive, etc.)¹ but find the idea of racial classification in humans abhorrent.
I can sort of see it from the idea that Nurture (culture and upbringing) would have a greater effect on a human’s characteristics than Nature would.
At the same time, my family tree has many twins and I’ve noticed that the identical ones have similar outcomes in life, whereas the fraternal ones (even the ones that look very similar) don’t really (N=3).
Maybe dog culture is not a thing, and that’s why people are happy to make these sweeping generalizations on dog characterics?
I’m lost a little
1: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/74/f7/df74f716c3a70f59aeb468152e4be927.png
Don’t cats and dogs freely mate with their kin, even in the wild?
Yes, but not very often at all, I believe most species have evolved to not mate with their relatives. Interbreeding causes significant problems if done for long enough.
The fun fact why inbreeding causes issues is because rare mutations which on their own are harmless and have a cosmologically small chance of ever being expressed as a trait. Inbreeding ups the chance of these mutations meeting up and actually getting to run their garbage code.