Why dont animals suffer the same mutation risk as humans when in-breeding?
924733
Um....it would be foolish to assume that animals cannot tell a sibling from another member of the species.  Penguins can find their mate from among thousands of other seemingly (to us) identical penguins upon returning to nesting grounds.  Animals can suffer the same risks as humans do when inbreeding, which is why captive population breeding is difficult to maintain without fresh captures from the wild.  Long bred populations, and cell lines show defects, commonly high rate of cancer.  Oh, and human DNA is not so much more complex than any other, in fact, there is a lily that has a genome more than 3x the size of ours.
285327
Your argument has some assumptions, assertions, and logic that are not sound.\n\nFirst of all, you only multiply probabilities together when they are independent variables - it would be easy to argue that many of the items that you mentioned are interdependent.\n\nAlso, I think you misunderstand what evolution of species is proposing.  Evolution does NOT depend on luck - it is instead an observation that lucky organisms survive and pass on their properties to their descendants.\n\nConsider bacteria - almost all mutations are harmful but a few bacteria have lucky mutations that make them immune to penicillin.  If penicillin is used on bacteria, only these lucky ones survive - and most of their descendants inherit the the same immunity-mutation.  \n\nThe original mutation is luck - the environment then selects and a small set of traits due to beneficial mutations persists.  And THAT is not luck, that is selection.  That's why the process is called "Natural Selection".  \n\nSadly, this is why almost all bacteria were zapped by the early antibiotics, and now (only 60 years later) we have hundreds of resistant strains.
135543
No. Mutations are the ultimate source of genetic _variation_, but this random variation is shaped by various evolutionary forces (natural selection, genetic drift, migration, selective mating...).\n\n"If these spontaneous mutations are truly spontaneous than will the environmental changes caused from the worlds industrialization have an effect on the rate and manner of which these bases are put together to form amino's within protein structures which will change our genotype therefore being expressed within our phenotype?" \n--> Most mutations are either neutral (have no effect on fitness) or deletereous (have negative or mortal effects). There are pollutants that can cause increased mutations but those are usually negative and are not incorporated into the gene pool of the human population.\n\n\n"If we evolve to our environment than will the chemicals we put into our ecosystem have a gradual but significant impact on our evolutionary path?" \n--> You mean that we should go on polluting and see if any mutations arise that make us "immune" to our own contamination? I wouldn't recommend that. \n\n"... we may have to save ourselves from ourselves in order to survive by mastering and altering genetics through the deletion of the genes within chromosomes that cause undesirable genetic diseases within the gametes before artificial conception.The next step in mans' evolution is the deletion of bad genes to survive in a tainted world.After technology advances to an even higher level we must master the addition of beneficial genes through advanced genetic engineering."\n<-- We cannot do that. It will be a long time before we even begin to understand how our genome works (relatively tiny parts are know now). If we ever do that (outside movies) then I'm afraid it won't be a very equal world for everyone. \nAnd in addition: there is no such thing as GOOD or BAD genes. Any trait is well adjusted only with respect to its environment; by eliminating some characteristics that you deem "bad", you might be erasing the chance to adapt to future changes. That's why the conservation of genetic diversity is important.
376212
Because the social structure of lions strongly decreases the potential for  inbreeding , lots of harmful recessive mutations have been 'allowed' to build up.  Genetic diseases thus crop up a lot where inbreeding occurs.\nCheetahs who went through a bottleneck are much less affected by inbreeding, in a sense they were forced to inbreed to an extent,  harmfull recessive mutations died out with the disesed animals.
663061
Nope, your not missing anything.\nNatural selection involves a loss of DNA.\nSay if you take a breed of dog that has the genes for long and short hair, then take it to a cold place such as Greenland or Canada. Left to there own devices, and assuming that at the time there wasn't any other breeds in the area, any short haired dogs would be less likely to survive. If, after many generations of dogs had passed, you took some dogs back to a warm country, the genes for short haired dogs would have either become extinct in that breed, or exceedingly rare.\nNatural selection doesn't show any new DNA - it does not support evolution.\nSome evolutionists would claim "mutations" of DNA would lead (over billions of years) to new species. However this is just another example of DNA loss.
24788
there are many mutations that happened to be beneficial to humans. for example, sickle cell anemia mutations created a positive effect in africa where malaria was prevalent
1069481
In general, any animal that has small litters must develop higher skills to look after them. Animals that have larger litters (turtles for example) bet on chance to lead some of them into adulthood.  So I would disagree with you. Human beings can raise even one single offspring successfully. OK, elephants do so, but giraffes do so too and dolphins.
998421
Technicallly, everybody is a mutant! We all carry some alterations unique to us in our genomes, this is part of what makes us different. And yes, over time we will evolve as a society to carry genes that are more advantageous to us due to the process of natural selection. It's a case of survival of the fittest!
1123043
Yes...however, the human race is one of the few species on the planet that kills one another for conflict not just for survival. In most cases when animals confront eachother it is very rare that one of the animals is killed, let alone seriously injured.
649309
One way or another, mankind has been using genetics in agriculture and farming ever since we began these activities.\nMost of the cereals we grow are hybrids which we either deliberately or accidentally created - likewise livestock. The animals we farm, especially cattle, sheep and pigs have been specifically bred to make them more suitable for our purposes. Bear in mind that when we choose WHICH particular individual animals are going to breed, we are using a form of genetic engineering.\n\nNowadays, of course, (and in the future) genetics is a much more technological science (as is almost everything else), and we know well that if technology CAN be misused, it WILL be misused.\n\nSo, to answer your question, genetics has brought enormous benefit to humanity in agriculture and livestock; further developments in genetics have the potential to benfit us even more - unfortunately, it also has the potential for disaster.
1128686
Genetic mutation occures on average every 100,000 cell division, which given the number of cell in a multi-cellular organizm or the number of single cell organizm in a population is quite often.\nNot all mutation has a measurable effect, and it isn't always passed on (in multi-cellular organizms). It is more likely to have a negative effect, and many genetic diseases originate in gene mutation. If by chance a mutation has a positive effect it is likely to be preserved and spread through evolution. \nBut it certainly cannot give a human (or any other organizm) any ability that contradicts the laws of physics, like many of those shown in movies.
968966
A "dot" and a "rag". \nNo, seriously, in most cases animals need to be of the same species (not "family" as a previous answer stated) to be able to produce offspring. However some species of the same genus can mate with each other and produce offspring, such as horses and donkeys, lions and tigers, some smaller cat species, dogs and wolves etc. Mostly the interspecies breed is infertile. This possibility is probably not as unnatural as one think but might rather point out that our (scientists') definition of a species as the basic classification unit of life, still contains elements of artificiality.\nYour mentioned species are not known to interbreed, though.
213472
Good question,  actually I got tested on this very subject in my Intro to Environment class.\n\nOne thing that can and does happen is the bottle neck sydrom.  That is, a species, take the cheetah starts out with a large amount of genetic variability (lots of different breeding animals), but over time, through loss of habitat, change in climate or introduction of a new disease or preditor (in the case of cheetahs, over hunting by humans), genetic isolation and competetion from other preditors or loss of prey will induce die back.  The strongest, most adaptable animals survive, but after awhile, the lack of numbers takes a toll on a genetic population.  There are less and less animals to breed with, so they end up breeding with brothers, sisters and mothers. In the case of the cheetah, bottlenecking has happened many times, but they recovered (which might not happen this time). This can wreak havok, since one good disease will wipe out the specieis (especially in the wild) in the long run.
20815
You've probably heard the fact that our DNA is 98% the same as that of a monkey, what many people don't know is that our DNA is also about 80% the same as that of a fruit fly. Dog DNA probably comes in somewhere in between. I don't think anyone has ever done a study on that though.
1163921
That is easily explained.  Adam and Eve had all the genetic traits in humans today.  As people migrated and settled in areas, certain genetic traits became dominant from the inbreeding of cultures.\n\nToday's world is bringing us closer to what Adam and Eve probably looked like.  Now that the world is getting smaller and people are having interracial relationships, genetic traits are not so concentrated anymore.\n\nYou really see this in military communities because they are world travellers and start relationships with other cultures, then their children do the same thing, etc.\n\nWhat we see today among animals and people are just the branches of the originals.  That is called micro evolution.  This is the fact that species produce different breeds of a species.  \n\nThere are over 250 different breeds of dogs.  No Christian would argue the fact that they probably share a common ancestor along with the wolf and the fox.  But it was a dog-like animal.  \n\nYou are never going to get a dog to breed with a cat.  That is called macro evolution which is what Christians don't agree with and that there is no evidence for.\n\nScience has proved time and time again that micro evolution is the only proven, testable, reasonable scientific fact.  Macro evolution only exists in the imagination.
1086883
Relative to humans, yes, but even then not that common. Most animals lay eggs and then leave, so they'll probably never encounter their young again. Other animals have parents that care for their young, but don't mate with them because they later leave and find other mates instead (and presumably don't want to mate with their own young). It makes biological sense to have anti-incest behavior pattern because incest produces more bad recessive traits. How they perceive that, though, who knows. Incest happens primarily in small, isolated populations where there aren't enough individuals to go around so that, probably out of a desperate sex-drive, they have incest.
245236
Horses have genes, and those genes determine what the horse will look like.  If there wasn't genetic variation, all the horses would look the same.