Inbreeding on Pern

[Astra]

Soooo, I was working on my Weyr, and fleshing out the backstories of all my starting characters, and I realized some frightening facts.

The senior queen, Siraith, is in fact the sister of her mate, the Weyrleader's bronze Amaroth. The dragon who *almost* caught Siraith, and failed, was actually Siraith's son, but not from Amaroth, from another bronze she mated with before.

Canonically, I don't think it matters much. I remember AM even said something about it being wired into dragons' DNA that inbreeding isn't much of an issue. I think Ramoth and Mnemmenth (sp?) were brother and sister, actually.

But I'm just wondering what other people think of the issue. In the modern era when people meticulously look after bloodlines, would you be willing to adopt dragons that came from a brother/sister Pernese pair?

[TyGryph]

Ramoth and Mnementh came from different clutches, at least, because Mnementh and F'lar brought Lessa to Benden.

I've always assumed that the genetic manipulation that made dragons from firelizards negated any possible bad effects of inbreeding. ALL Pernese dragons are descended from that handful of first golds that Kitty Ping made.

It can be argued that evolution and selective breeding (the first golds were encouraged to mate with bronzes and browns because they were bigger, and the Pernese thought they needed bigger dragons in addition to more dragons.) can give rise to variations within the breed. There was an RP weyr that I was briefly involved with where they'd been banished to some icy wasteland and cut off from the rest of Pern so long that they honestly thought they were the last Weyr left. Their dragons had evolved (effectively) a blubber layer, and their hides had become somewhat pastel.

For comparison, the Danachian dragons have HUGE inbreeding taboos because bad things DO happen to them. I sincerely suspect that this was included in their creation due to irritation with the lack of consequence in Pernese inbreeding.

I think the genetic healthiness of successful Pernese-hybrids would at least have a lessening effect on inbreeding problems from the non-Pernese half.

All that being said... yes, I'd adopt from "inbred" Pernese clutches, because that's the way it works on Pern. I'd need to start writing candidates again first... >.>

[Shard]

... Yeah, what Ty said.


I don't mind it at all, in fact it gives a little more to write about if the candidates are squeamish about things like that.