Why does inbreeding cause birth defects?

Question

Why does inbreeding cause birth defects?

In: 3

Answer 1

Inbreeding is bad in humans because, in the past, we have had VERY small bottlenecks in our population. I believe that, tens of thousands of years ago, we believe that at one point there were as few as 300 humans on the planet. This means that humans have a very low level of genetic diversity, compared to animals that haven’t experienced a population bottleneck. This lack of genetic diversity makes inbreeding dangerous as malfunctioning, recessive genes can get paired up, result in offspring with diseases.