Mutants Paraded on Leashes

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Big dogs, little dogs, pointed ears, floppy ears, many varieties at the dog show. Get out the leashes and take the mutants on parade. Breeding animals for specific traits has been done for ages, but nowadays it is mostly for appearance. This artificial selection is bad for the dogs.

Darwinists and creationists agree that the ancestor of all dogs was a wolf, rich in genetic diversity. Purebreds often have genetic diseases that cause pain and early death in some. Want a dog for a companion? Get a mix, which has many genetic resources to draw from.

Basset Hound, Unsplash / Apostolos Vamvouras
The neighbor walks her dog that looks like a pot-bellied pig, which snorts and breathes loudly. Special breeds are not only expensive, but high maintenance — and a far cry from the original created kind. Although animal breeding is done through artificial selection, many of the same aspects of natural selection are involved.

Natural selection (it is out of convenience to use that phrase since there is no being to do selecting) weeds out organisms that will not survive in a specific environment. Neither it nor breeding add any genetic information, so the claim that natural selection leads to Darwinian evolution is false.
When choosing a pet, many people opt for purebred pedigree dogs. Though they come at a price, it is easier to predict the eventual size, temperament, and needs of a purebred dog breed than for a ‘mutt’. But as a [2008] BBC documentary, “Pedigree Dogs Exposed”, shows, the cost of breeding purebred dogs is genetic as well as economic.

All dogs are descendants of a wolf-like ancestor. This ancestor had the genetic diversity that allowed people to breed dogs as different in size as the Chihuahua and the Great Dane. Other traits such as colour, temperament, and exercise needs are just as diverse among the breeds. This great variability is an example of just how much genetic variation is built into the various created animal kinds. Other breeds, as will be shown, are the result of downhill mutations.

To read the rest, visit "‘Parade of mutants’—pedigree dogs and artificial selection." Related: "Eugenics and Dog Breeds."