Im talking about humans.
What about animals?
In: Biology
If the deformity is caused by genes, it is usually because of recessive genes (if a dominant gene caused deformities, they may not reproduce to pass the genes on).
In general, if there is a dominant gene from one parent and a recessive gene from the other parent, the dominant gene will be expressed. But the child would still carry the recessive gene.
If 2 people are in the same family, both with 1 dominant and 1 recessive gene for this deformity, they have a chance to have a child with 2 recessive genes, expressing the deformity.
This is a very simplified explanation, but it’s the simple idea that 2 people from the same family would likely carry the same gene, whereas strangers would not.
There are “dominant,” and “recessive,” genes. A recessive gene needs to be provided by both the mother and the father in order for the child to get that trait, while a dominant gene only needs to be possessed by 1.
However, a person can have a recessive gene and not show it. Sometimes that recessive gene is just for a hair color they don’t have, other times it’s for a disability or health issue. Even though this trait isn’t visible, they can still pass that trait to their children.
Since closely related partners would have similar genes, if they have a child together it raises the risk that these hidden genes end up matching and causing the child to have that recessive gene.
Every child inherits lots of little genetic problems from their mom and another set of little genetic problems from their dad. But they’re really spread out, so for every little problem one parent gives you, your other parent’s genes probably provide a healthy version. So we’re usually able to withstand stuff like that without much problem.
If your mom and dad are closely related, it’s much more likely you’ll be getting a lot of the SAME little genetic problems from your mom and your dad. Which would mean you’d have no healthy versions to make it okay.
It’s not that inbreeding directly causes deformity, it just creates a larger chance of you getting a disease that causes deformity.
Diseases evolve all the time, that’s why you need a flu shot every year or so. Along with that, having genetic diversity (very unrelated people having offspring) creates a greater chance to spread a gene that makes you less susceptible to disease. If you keep having offspring with someone who has the same genes you sort of keep your lineage from receiving these helpful genes.
We basically have to keep up with evolving diseases in this way. The same applies to most animals.
You have 2 copies of (almost) every gene. Sometimes one copy is bad, but that’s fine because you still have one good copy.
Because genes are inherited, people closely related to you will likely have similar mixes of good copies and bad copies.
When you have kids, you pass one copy of each gene to them, and their other copy comes from your mate. If you pass on a bad copy, and your mate is closely related to you, then there’s a higher chance that your kid will end up with 2 bad copies and no good copies of some genes, resulting in defects.
If you don’t know what genes are, they’re basically the “chapters” of your DNA that instruct how to build all the components that make up your body.
The two people who make a baby have a bunch of playing cards some of the playing cards have been damaged over time but that’s okay because the other person might have the same card that they can use instead that works better for their deck of cards. You can’t use the exact same card in your dick or things get a little messy. If there is no choice but to put those cards together you get evolution of the Pokémon people.
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