"Rebecca Rice" <philospher77@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:6c1Tj.13006$GE1.11242@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Mark Stephen wrote:
>> Jon Schild wrote:
>>>
>>> ilya2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>>>> Has anyone ever written a story about aliens who take over Earth, and
>>>> regard humans as "charming wildlife"? I know there are stories where
>>>> humans are *pests* living in an alien environment, but what I am
>>>> asking about are stories where the top dogs of said environment
>>>> actually *like* humans, and take some steps to ensure our survival --
>>>> but not to the point of leaving our planet to us. IOW, the way many
>>>> suburbanites view raccoons.
>>>
>>> There is one I read not too long ago, but for some reason can't
remember
>>> much about. The humans were kept in pens and used as horses by the
>>> rather small aliens. Not quite charming wildlife, but not exterminated
>>> either.
>>>
>>
>> Not the same story, but in Jack Vance's _Dragon Masters_, humans and
>> aliens breed their captives selectively to produce weapons, draft
animals
>> etc.
>>
>> I'm a little surprised this idea never comes up in the interminable
>> evolution threads. I have three dogs, a border collie, an Irish
flat-coat
>> retriever and a Great Pyrenees. They differ wildly in size, appearance,
>> temperament and intelligence, and these traits seem to have been
>> established in only a few generations. AFAIK, the only sf novel with a
>> cultural background which would allow this sort of experimentation on
>> humans by humans was _Iron Dream_, but is this sort of selective
breeding
>> with humans actually impossible, or merely unethical and kinda
>> disgusting?
>>
>
> I was watching a nature show recently about dogs (forget the actual
title,
> sorry!), and they said that one of the reasons that there is such a wide
> variation in dogs, in a relatively short time frame (80% of the
recognized
> breeds today didn't exist before 1900) is that dogs have "slippery" DNA.
> Apparently dogs have a lot of repeating sections of DNA, and how many
> repeats there are has a dramatic impact on a dogs appearance. For
> example, the different sizes (chihuaha, lab, Great Dane) depend on the
> number of repeats of a specific section of DNA. Other animals have
> repeating DNA. For example, I believe that the severity of one of the
> inherited birth defects... cerebral palsy, maybe... depends on the
number
> of repeats of a particular section of DNA. The more repeats, the more
> severe the symptoms. However, they do not have as many of them as dogs
do.
> So the short answer is: yes, you can selectively breed for traits with
> other animals, but no, you will probably never get the variety you do
with
> dogs.
>
> Rebecca
Not never, it would just take a lot more time, and a lot more effort.
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