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ANIMAL VS. HUMAN GENETICS

Barbara J. Andrews, SAAB Member

Is your ancestry record as accurate as your dog’s pedigree? Have you met your great-grandparents? What do you actually know about yourself?

The point is that we actually know more about a purebred bull or horse than we know about ourselves! Animal breeders keep careful records whereas people just “have to trust” fidelity as to who is related to who.

My maternal (female) genetics are from “Grandma Wood” who explained that Grandpa was English but that my mother was a “Gypsy.” Scorn was in Grandma’s voice because instead of my mother hiding her background, she capitalized on it as a fortune teller and as a dancer at the famous Gypsy Inn in St. Petersburg, Florida.

My father’s genetics were outwardly that of a “red-headed Irishman” but his side of the family is a whole ‘nother story. His brother Jesse was classic native American, jet black thick shiny hair, dark tan skin. Uncle Jesse worked outside (logging) whereas my father worked inside as a “silk spotter” in the new dry-cleaning business. Back then there were no synthetic fabrics, only cotton, wool, and silk.

Uncle Jessy was a mule breeder whose jackass, Mr. Vick, was in demand as the sire of the best logging mules in the mountains of North Carolina. You may remember it was said that mules won the war. In point of fact, mules were as vital as ammunition and they outworked most machines.

Back to genetics. I am English, European gypsy, Irish, and Native American. I married a “Kissimmee Cowboy” which was a big deal back then. BTW, that part is weird b/c there were “Indians” in Florida, more than what became known as the Florida Seminoles.

I’ve “known” that part of me is more Comanche than Cherokee. That made no sense until I stumbled over history that the Comanche were great travelers and in fact they were in what is now Georgia and Florida. Duh! So much for the fool’s racket of genetic testing.

The point is that most dog and horse breeders know their genetics but it is still a great racket. Ego makes a lot of people wealthy. We keep genetic records on our animals that are often more accurate than that of our parents…! Someone realized how much ranchers spend testing cattle, horses, and then dogs and “they” realized what a gold-mine it could be… Sooo, they hitched up medical testing and pitched our pride to pay big bucks for human genetic testing. But we seem to have ignored one critical factor!!!

What they dare not mention was that there are glitches in human tests because we don’t always know who daddy was… Not everyone is tested. And in animals someone witnesses the breeding. Soo, while the use of human genetic ancestry tests may yield useful information, (or whoops!) the technology’s commercial may leave consumers with inconsistent or embarrassing results.

At this point ancestry tests might be best understood as recreational. Even so, we need to use common sense and proceed with caution, especially for populations that are underrepresented in databases, like Native Americans or illegal aliens.

Related Article Information: Marvelous Mule, A Genetic Anomaly

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