X-Factor - Large Heart

[Jeff]

Follow the money honey. Follow aspartame, artificial sweetener studies that claim that zsro calorie soft drinks make people fat and guess who pays for these 'scientific studies'? The sugar industry! Diet soda costs the sugar industry $billions in lost sugar sales a year, so if they can convince us that diet soda makes us fat, then we'll switch back to sugar sweetened soda. Now wasn't that easy.

So now we're suppose to believe that there's a scientific study that let's us breed a horse with the 'speed gene' if we'll just cough up the $ for the study. Considering 2 seconds or less difference in time between the first place and last place horse in any given race, I'll pass on that one. Generally ALL thorougubred race horses are fast and have a 'speed' gene, just some faster than others. What can't be measured is a horses spirit, his willingness to try harder, his determination to be the first, to be at the head of the line and not at the back of the line, his heart. A living spirit, a God-given life. Can't map that on a chart.

Shetland pony study? Give me the crooked legged shetland pony with 'heart' and I'll bet he can outrun the shetland ponies with good knees.

[Pan Zareta]

No pony with crooked legs due to skeletal atavism could ever outrun a normal pony. That's a devastating condition, in no way comparable to slight imperfections in conformation that can be overcome.

A fair degree of skepticism is always a wise approach to novel findings from scientific research, especially as distilled and reported by popular media, but it's meaningless unless accompanied by a well-informed, unbiased, rational mind.

[Jeff]

I defer all the shetland pony expertise.

[aethervox]

I just ran across a chart on 'The Matchmaker's' web site: http://www.members.shaw.ca/thematchmaker/ (you have to scroll down to see it).

He states:

Buckpasser is easily the most influential thoroughbred sire in today's pedigrees when attached to the female line.

I'll let you read his reasoning.

[Jeff]

Thankyou for the link Aethervox.

[Elvis2016]

Brogers

In a study called the Potential Role of Maternal Lineage in Breeders Strategy there is evidence that the dam is more influential than the sire in generating elite runners. They hypothesize that mt DNA may cause this difference. Although mt DNA plays a role in the above success in generating elite runners, the X chromosome may also be an important part of the above elite runners prowess.

I've read the paper. It was done by Allan Davie's group out of Australia. Theyve done a lot of work on mtDNA so this was a paper whose purpose was to tie mtDNA to performance.

What they failed to explain in the paper is that because of selection, there is less variance in performance coming from the sire. That is, because the bar to be a stallion is so high, the difference in terms of performance between sires is low. Conversely, because the bar to be a broodmare is quite low (that is, anything with ovaries can get bred), the variance of performance is much higher in mares. Thus, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The more we select on sires, and make the bar to become a stallion high, the less we select on mares, and therefore the variance in offsprings performance revolves more around the quality of the mare, not the sire.

I think Mme Germaine Vuillier had the relevance of Broodmares sussed out, back 70-80 years ago with this statement " it's the mare that makes the Stallion, and not the opposite"