Inbreeding... What are the effects.

I recommend reading up on some of the old royal families-- The Hapsburgs are a prime example of a clan so horribly inbred that it led to terrible mutations-- brain damage, infirtility, messed up joints and ugly deformities, etc.

As far as the royal families are concerned, blue-bloods they've often been called because of Hemophilia, where the blood loses ability to clot like normal blood. And an interesting tribe in Africa I saw on TLC recently was called the Ostrich People, I believe. A high number of members had only two long toes on each foot. Some were more deformed than others, making it impossible to walk. Ick! Good topic.

One effect is increased incidence of any condition that is recessive.

Across all species inbreeding tend to decrease pigmentation, size, vigor and symmetricality. Think wild rat versus lab rat.

Look at the Pharoes also. Do you include marriage between first cousins? That happens quite a lot. The effects might be in a study, so look up your university library database for psycology studies. I think there will be two types of effect for modern cases. One being the actual physiological effects. The second is the psychological effect of being regarded as a social misfit, a probable mental case, by your own family and friends.

When we were in Tanzania recently, we visited a village where there were an exceptionally high number of albinos.

Apparently some time ago, the leader of this particular village decided to encourage siblings to marry and interbreed, because he wanted to keep the bloodline of the village pure and untainted by outsiders. After a couple of generations, albinos began to be born. And because siblings were continuing to marry, more and more albinos were born.

I think the relevant point is that with incest, whatever defective genes are being carried in the family have a very high chance of being passed to the children.

Shara

It's always been my understanding that in each of us are a few genes that are not up to par. They lack the full blueprint necessary for what ever it controls to develop as it should. With interbreeding that gene keeps getting weaker and weaker and let's say it is for the ones dealing with a nose. As the interbreeding goes on...the nose in the offspring might take on a whole 'new' look and not function as a nose is suppose to.

If this is done for many generations you can only imagine the out come. I would think that anything you can think of could take on a malformation.

Look back at small settlements any where in the world and you will see 'family' traits that show up in each of them. After awhile almost everyone looks like everyone else in the town. Now put that in the mental area and you really have some interesting traits.

In horror....the sky is the limit I would think. Since our genes are the blueprints of how our bodies are built inside and out it stands to reason that each new copy or person will carry the bad stuff on and on.

Oddly enough, the only really frightening episode of XFiles I ever watched was one that explored inbreeding that I've never seen repeated. A family of murdering freaks that reminded me of one nearby here where they are all cross-eyed. I think great horror comes easily from this topic. Clans like cults are great for feeling outside the establishment rules. The thicker they become, the more frightening.

I just googled and found these sites dealing with interbreeding. Some interesting reading and a bit strange.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070802-neanderthals.html




[URL]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702158.html





http://www.feralchildren.com/en/pager.php?df=douthwaite1997&pg=3



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To use my own family as an example, they lived out in Arizona where the nearest neighbor was 2 hours away. My grandfather married his neice. I know, the ick factor gets me too. I won't even go into the ages because that part just makes me shiver.

But I digress. Their kids ended up with a wide range of disorders. My father got one of the worst. He has an extremely rare mitochondria disorder where his mitochondria just randomly self terminate. He also has a very complicated named disease that in layman's terms is called white matter disease. Where the brain tissue on a brain scan shows up as white (dead) instead of grey. On top of that he has also gotten MS.

He would not have had any of these disorders where his brain and muscles are literally breaking down and dying had they not intermarried. They were so recessive and so rare that the chances you'd even find two people with it are astronomical. Hence the dangers of intermarriage.

As others have said it's all about the weak genes and recessive. My family has an extremely high rate of cancer as well. Three of my aunts and one of my uncles from my dad's side have had it, one has died from it, my grandmother died from it. Mixing close genes are just asking for all kinds of trouble.

On the mental side of things I'll use my husband's family. His mother's grandmother was raped by her brother and produced a kid. He has paranoid schizophrenia along with a few other mental disorders. Those have been passed down unfortunately, but thankfully not to my husband.

CACTUSWENDY said:

I just googled and found these sites dealing with interbreeding. Some interesting reading and a bit strange.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070802-neanderthals.html

Click to expand...

Eek! I have that bump!

And my mate, (who often acts like a neanderthal,) makes fun of it.

Oh, there are so many jokes to go with this thread.

There's a number of stories about large families that had 1st cousins find each other and have relationships only to find out later they were cousins at family reunions. I've heard that story from a couple of Filipino friends. Maybe it's a popular story, I don't know.

I don't know about you guys, but I get mad every time I see a "backwoods" family that is inbred. I really angers me that Hollywood and others portray everybody that chooses to live away from cities and large population areas as inbred and incestuous.

I would have agreed with you Ted once upon a time before moving away from the city. Here, in rural MI, one soon discovers how prevalent inbreeding is. Offhand, I can name three families living nearby. One, speaks so openly of the affairs within the family circle that they have even appeared on Jerry Springer. Before that, I had always thought those stories were made up.

There are the Hessians in the Pine Barrens of NJ.
and this
http://www.jordanembassyus.org/03132000002.htm

Wow... I've never learned so much about inbreeding as I have tonight. This is a great thread. Sorry I don't have anything of interest to add. I just enjoyed reading the things that we humans do to one another.

Welcome to AW Amlpti!! Hope you found it happy here.

What an interesting study. It is amazing what they can trace.
Thanks for the link.

There are common ailments in the middle east related to consanguinity (SP?). http://rarediseases.about.com/od/geneticdisorders/a/doryeshorim.htm
and
http://www.sci.u-szeged.hu/ABS/2003/ActaHP/4747.pdf

This is all so interesting.

While I agree it's bad form to stereotype all rural communities as prone to inbreeding, it's worth bearing in mind the local landscape. There's stories of Greek looking people near India and Welsh speaking communities in South America because the geography made it hard to leave once they'd arrived (good ol' Empire building). If there's a lot of travel inbreeding shouldn't be so much of an issue, but if your stuck in a deep valley, or the middle of a desert, or deep inside a jungle, or an isolated island... If there's good roads and something worth having nearby you're going to need stronger cultural reasons to justify the inbreeding.

I remember reading somewhere that it is the habit of inbreeding that causes real problems, rather than individual cases of same. That habit reinforces recessive traits, but of course such traits need not be negative.

sorry, can't seem to copy the URL

Hopefully the stereotype does come from folks who were isolated - backwoods can mean quite isolated. Then it makes more sense that inbreeding would occur.

In my paternal family line, starting with a pre-revolution settlement to just before the 1900's, the family married first cousins more often than not. It was a German religious settlement, and they really didn't approve of outsiders. Originally there weren't many people around [actually, there were a ton of Indians], but later that excuse didn't hold water.

I was born with a tail That would be an awesome freaky-inbreeding one, although B vitamins were more likely to blame, really. It's called Spina Bifida Occulta and can include great freakiness in its various forms (it can be quite sad, too, of course, but I'm just talking fiction possibilities).

It has a genetic component, at least once introduced in a line.

have you ever seen THAT X-files episode?

**shudders**