The Family Tree or There isnt enough brain bleach in the world (NSFW)

[taurinejunkie]

I beat you all. I'm my own grandpa.

[pzychobitch]

That's like listening to a live segment of Jerry Springer - minus the cat fighting and audience cheering.

JERRY!! JERRY!! JERRY!!

[ADoyle90815]

My ex-husband's parents were actually second cousins at the very least as they were able to get married legally. Still, I'm glad that I didn't have children with that very shallow gene pool.

[PepperElf]

That's like listening to a live segment of Jerry Springer - minus the cat fighting and audience cheering.

or howard stern. although in his case his reaction depends on how hot the women are.

[Chromatix]

Inbreeding is a real problem for thoroughbred horses and several breeds of dogs. This comes about quite easily when you aggressively restrict breeding stock to only the most "perfect" specimens. Health problems and even cleft palates are far too common.

It's got to the point where mutts are often preferred by real dog-lovers because they possess "hybrid vigour", which is really the absence of inbreeding effects. Likewise, if someone wants a horse to ride, as opposed to race, they won't get a thoroughbred.

It's easy to see how the same effects could occur in certain human populations...

[Dadeo]

It's easy to see how the same effects could occur in certain human populations...

They're trying to breed the perfect redneck?

[ZedOmega]

My ex-husband's parents were actually second cousins at the very least as they were able to get married legally. Still, I'm glad that I didn't have children with that very shallow gene pool.

I dunno, that old woman's family sounds more like it's swimming in a gene puddle.

[dalesys]

I dim-member a blurb many years ago, that for almost all of human history, the standard spose-spouse relatedness averaged out at second cousin.

Small insular villages, 10 miles / 16 kilometers being an all day expedition... the only enrichment was when the barbarian hordes came through pillaging and ...

[Mike Taylor]

Inbreeding is a real problem for thoroughbred horses and several breeds of dogs. This comes about quite easily when you aggressively restrict breeding stock to only the most "perfect" specimens. Health problems and even cleft palates are far too common.

It's got to the point where mutts are often preferred by real dog-lovers because they possess "hybrid vigour", which is really the absence of inbreeding effects. Likewise, if someone wants a horse to ride, as opposed to race, they won't get a thoroughbred.

It's easy to see how the same effects could occur in certain human populations...

The Habsburg Chin is probably the most famous of those effects.

[Chromatix]

IIRC second cousin isn't too bad - even now it's perfectly legal in most civilised countries. It means you have two great-grandparents in common.

I don't think it would have only been barbarians providing fresh material. If it takes all day to go 10 miles, then that's roughly your hunting/gathering radius, and another tribe that far away won't interfere much with your ability to survive. So it would only take one or two days' journey to migrate between the two, provided you knew where they were. Later on, when trading became commonplace, traders and travellers - even if they were a minority of the population - were sufficiently common as to cause more effective (and peaceful) genetic mixing.

With that said, if a population succeeds over a large number of generations despite some level of inbreeding, that probably means that the recessive defects have been bred out. It seems likely that the Spartans, for example, practiced this actively - by discarding babies which had deformities very early in life. (These days such a practice would count as eugenics, and is highly taboo due to the potential for abuse by racists and misogynists.)

[protege]

This episode leaves me with the desire for lots of to drown out the images that are chasing my fleeing braincells around my skull. I managed to leave at that point.

...and this is *exactly* why you don't feed the crazy.

[dalesys]

With some people their family history is better named as gooneology...

[smfrazier]

I have a certain fondness for confusing new friends by telling them "I'm my own aunt, my mum is my sister"

This reminds me of the song I'm My Own Grandpa"

[PepperElf]

Inbreeding is a real problem for thoroughbred horses and several breeds of dogs. This comes about quite easily when you aggressively restrict breeding stock to only the most "perfect" specimens. Health problems and even cleft palates are far too common.

It's got to the point where mutts are often preferred by real dog-lovers because they possess "hybrid vigour", which is really the absence of inbreeding effects. Likewise, if someone wants a horse to ride, as opposed to race, they won't get a thoroughbred.

It's easy to see how the same effects could occur in certain human populations...

it's also why hemophilia was so prevalent in European royalty. Perhaps not from partnerships as squicky as the one from the original story here, but enough cousin-marriages that it led to rarer diseases.

[taurinejunkie]

This reminds me of the song I'm My Own Grandpa"

If you'll take a moment and look for my previous post in this thread...