Pink-Eyed Dilution Article

[Admin]

There's a new article on Pink-Eyed Dilution up for the advanced genetics section.

Pink-Eyed Dilution

Ed

[Loz]

Very thorough Ed ;D

[belueberry]

What a wonderful article. Now of course the question it all poses is this: is it ethical to selectively breed for pink- or red-eyed individuals? Not easily answered!

[Loz]

Well this was discussed a little while back, which was prompted by Wyss saying..

Then on another thread a European member (sorry I can't remember if she was from Germany or not) was commenting on the German rat fancy, saying how mutations were wrong and as a result do not allow breeders to breed for pink eye dilution, rex, dumbo etc. So unless this was just one German rat society, and there are more... I'm not sure.
Another extreme, which I was very shocked by! I can understand not breeding for hairless, manx, maybe even dumbo... But I never even considered pink eye to be a problem... Where does the line stop? They do have a good point, if we're breeding for the healthiest animals then how can breeding animals with worse eyesight be in that goal?

A reply by Ed..

The point about differences in welfare from country to country is an interesting debate within itself, as is mutations and where to draw the line, but I feel it's best to bring those subjects up in another post, but very quickly, here's some food for thought regarding the pink eyed mutation..

Their eyesight maybe inferior to black eyed animals, but as has been researched, pp gerbils exhibit much less severe seizures, and if they do get them they are shorter in length, so maybe breeding Pp into a gerbil would ensure the strain is stronger, and would guard against seizures in a species that is known to be seizure prone?

Also if you read my article on piebaldism in gerbils you may have noticed this,

" Incidentally for the purists who believe that a white rodent with pink eyes couldn't survive in the wild, there is a brief mention in Science by Minckler and Pease (1938) of a feral colony of albino rats inhabiting a local dump in Minnesota. It was presumed local students set them free and they thrived. Presumably because of abundant food and water that was available, and also a lack of predators."

and Ed also posted this study..
gerbilsuk.proboards15.com/index.cgi?board=care&action=display&thread=1187867067

A few more extra reads if anyones interested!

[Admin]

Well the pink-eyed dilution gene in our gerbils still effectively leaves a lot of pigment in the eyes, so any visual deficits will probably be minor. However you can get pink eyed animals by combining any of the mutations on the C locus with pp to get pseudo albinos, and these animals will have very bad vision. However you have to realise that most rodents with rod based vision rely on many other senses to get by and vision is just a fall-back sense that they use. if depth perception is bad they will use their whiskers and touch to quickly adapt to their world.

For more info on gerbil vision have a look at the article I wrote here,

Gerbil vision


You'll see that vision is only a small part of their overall senses that they use, and they employ many strategies in their daily routines which rely minimally on just vision alone.

Ed