> -----Original Message----- > From: Julie Alipaz [mailto:jalipaz at stanford.edu] > Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 11:07 AM > To: dragaera at dragaera.info > Subject: Re: Paarfi and the photic sneeze reflex > > >I can think of three explanations: > > Of course it could have a scientific answer, we already know > that the Dragerans were lab rats so to speak, and when working with > lab rats, or any kind of lab organism, you work with finite > populations. Given this, if say a male which was a sneezer had a > larger percentage of offspring than any other male in the small lab > population then given that sneezing is a dominant gene, all his > offspring would have the reaction to the furnace. And within one to > three generations, you could expect that most of the lab > populaition--and threfore most of the present day Drageran populaiton > would be photic sneezers, because the trait is more or less fixed in > the populaiton. It is also possible, that it was actually selected > for. It may be that the Jenoine actually wanted the trait bred in > for some reason or... > Oooh. I like that one better than "SKZB is a photic sneezer & didn't know better". (I bet he does too.) Especially since I work with a colony of lab mice; I know intimately what you are talking about. Reminds me of the problem with "barbering". We got in a new batch of mice; we were switching from CF-1 to CD-1 strain (both are outbred albino strains, if you are curious.) Sometimes you will see all but one female in a cage with a shaved neck. The female with the furry neck is "barbering" the others. Some dominance thing, I suppose. The company (I think it was Charles Rivers, but I don't remember any more) ended up sending us a report about it eventually. This behavior only started up recently and doesn't seem to affect anything, but given the nature of scientific experiments involving lab animals, anything that could cause variation in your results is cause for concern because you want to get clear-cut results with the fewest number of animals & cost etc, so they looked into it, and never did come up with a cause, other than that they've been bred for so long. So it can even happen to a so-called "outbred" strain which I imagine would most closely approximate the breeding patterns of Dragaerans after they were released from the cages. Rachel