Why does inbreeding increase the likelihood of the offspring having a genetic defect?
In: Biology
Every individual carries a double complement of genes, that is each gene comes in a pair, one from mother, the other from father. If one gene out of the pair happens to be defective, there is still the other healthy gene from the pair which can take the workload. But if mom and dad are closely related, they have a large chance of having the same defective genes (like inherited from the same parent), and therefore the offspring has a large chance to get BOTH genes in a pair defective, resulting in a physical deformity or other negative effect.
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