inyati13
Well-known member
robert, the reason I said you were going into the science of Speciation is not because I thought you were unclear. On the contrary, your first sentence is a concept that you would spend a charpter on in any text book on Speciation. I took Speciation in about 1974, the text book was written by Ernst Mayr who at the time was the authority on how species are formed by the mechanisms of genetics, natural selection, and evolution. It occurred to me that Breeders are as close to Biologist as anything except maybe zoo keepers. Their fundamental materials are biological units. They are employing the sciences of genetics in their breeding to arrive at the phenotype they seek. It is interesting to me to see the diverse points of view on what a phenotype should be and how your arrive at it. But that is what you would expect. Despite the tools we use, man is pursuing a phenotype that is, "arbitrary and capricious". There is no word of God that gives us an absolute truth as to what a phenotype should be. In fact, what we generally accept as "the standard" might turn out to be a failure. I see it in everyone's comments. There are plenty of skeptics and I have even received PMs expressing them. I don't think anyone is right or wrong. I think the cattleman is doing his job and I applaud people who think their own thoughts and pursue them.robert":3dms7n4r said:If you allow nature to eliminate problems then you will find that functional characteristics will multiply simply due to survival of the fittest (fit for their environment). However the temptation is always to modify that type to fit your own 'ideal', for example if you dislike more set to the hind legs than that which has emerged naturally over time then cattle with straighter hind legs get preferred over those with more set and for that there will be a consequence. An example of this is the dairy industry where classification of animals is done to a breed standard yet after fertility feet and legs remain a major reason to cull, I suspect that selection for environment ( in the case of dairy that would be concrete rather than pasture) has not been allowed to occur.