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I found a video on artificial selection in roses.

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The Next Frontier: The process of rose breeding and selection

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My example is Bulls that are used for bullfighting.

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"Here all animals are born and live free until they die," says Victorino Martin, pointing proudly to the herds of fighting bulls grazing by the Tagus River on a famous breeding farm in Spain.

With their trademark grey coat, the bulls weigh around half a tonne when they reach maturity at five years old. By then some of them will already have been sent to their death in bullfighting arenas, a tradition both cherished and reviled in Spain.

But for Martin, breeding bulls is a passionate, family affair and he stresses his cattle are treated with more dignity and humanity than those destined for people's plates.

On the Las Tiesas de Santa Maria ranch in the southwestern Extremadura region, the bulls munch peacefully in a field scattered with spring flowers.

A horseman rides next to a herd of Victorino Martin 'lidia' bullocks (fighting bullocks) grazing at Las Tiesas de. Santa Maria ranch, near Portezuelo. Photo: AFP

It's a deceptive calm, however. "They fight and kill each other," says second-generation breeder Martin, a slim 56-year-old vet with a warm smile.

"There are nearly as many deaths in breeding farms as in the arena," he adds.

The keepers on horseback stay well away. Several sport the scars of horn butts.

The ranch, with its 1,100 animals spread over some 2,000 hectares, is famous among bullfighting fans.

"Victorino Martin, the father, created this farm from nothing and turned it into a legend," says Juan Diego Madueño, a journalist who specialises in bullfighting.

He bought a herd in 1960 and quickly bettered the breed to make his bulls stronger.

"Before, people would go to the arenas to see the toreros (bullfighters). With Victorino Martin, they ended up going to see the bulls," says Madueño.

"He allowed breeders to ask for payment for participating in corridas (bullfights)."

Spanish rancher Victorino Martin poses at Las Tiesas de Santa Maria ranch, near Portezuelo. Photo: AFP

Selected before birth

Martin junior has inherited his father's passion.

"My first memory was going to feed the bulls with him, when I was four," he says.

Just like his father, he is a "novillero," a bullfighter who fights two- or three-year-old bulls.

He carefully selects breeding pairs, and the resulting young bulls and cows are tested on the ranch as if they were in a bullfighting arena.

Those who show the most fighting spirit are destined for reproduction, and their calves will grow up and become "toros bravos" -- those who go to the arena.

The others will be sent to the abattoir.

Martin is head of the Fighting Bull Foundation, created by breeders in 2015 to defend bullfighting in Spain. That year, some 300 left-wing municipalities banned shows involving bulls, says the group's director general Borja Cardelus.

For Martin, the corrida is "a sacrificial ritual where man must risk his life in order to be allowed to kill the animal".

He also defends the "becerradas", bullfights for beginners with calves that can be particularly gruesome and have been slammed by animal rights activists.

"They're necessary for the training of young toreros," he insists.

However they are becoming "fewer and fewer," adds his daughter Pilar, 32, also a vet and passionate about bullfighting.

Worse conditions in food industry

And Martin points to the free-range life of his animals, of which only 10 percent are sent to fight every year, compared to cattle in the food industry, which are often locked up and killed when they are "10 to 15 months" old.

"A breeding farm for fighting bulls is one of few places where a cow can die of old age -- up to 22 years -- while a dairy cow is killed after her fourth lactation."

A bull, meanwhile, can live until it is 14 years old.

"Cobradiezmos" may well reach that age. The muscular bull was pardoned for bravery in combat on April 13, 2016 in Sevilla by bullfighter Manuel Escribano.

Since then, he has grazed a wide stretch of land peppered with oak trees, surrounded by 35 cows which have given him seven calves.

Of 20,000 bulls killed last year, a mere 29 were pardoned, says the foundation.

But this ritual underscores the respect that bullfighting fans have for the bull.

"The fan soaks in the bull's qualities," says Martin.

"He doesn't complain, rises above hardship and fights until the end."

By AFP's Patrick Rahir

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Breeding fighting bulls in Spain: a family's passion

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"Here all animals are born and live free until they die," says Victorino Martin, pointing proudly to the herds of fighting bulls grazing by the Tagus River on a famous breeding farm in Spain. With their trademark grey coat, the bulls weigh around half a tonne when they reach maturity at five years old.

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My example is Broccoli, Kale, Brussel Sprouts and Cauliflower all at the same time!!

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Updated

In some circles, kale has become really, really popular. Once a little-known speciality crop, its meteoric rise is now the subject of national news segments. Some experts are predicting that kale salads will soon be on the menus at TGI Friday's and McDonald's.

Cabbage is a different story. Per capita consumption of it peaked way back in the 1920s, when the average American ate 22 pounds of it per year. Nowadays, we eat about eight pounds, most of it disguised as cole slaw or sauerkraut.

This makes it pretty interesting that kale and cabbage - along with broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, collard greens, and kohlrabi, and several other vegetables - all come from the exact same plant species: Brassica oleracea.

How is this possible? About 2500 years ago, B. oleracea was solely a wild plant that grew along the coast of Britain, France, and countries in the Mediterranean. That wild form - which still exists and is known as wild mustard - looks like this:

In Ancient Greece and Rome, people began growing the plant in their gardens. To maximize the amount of food they got from it, they preferentially planted seeds from plants that grew more leaves, and after many generations, this sort of artificial selection produced a leafy version of wild mustard that looked more like modern-day kale or collard greens.

Later (sometime after the year 1600), farmers selected for variants of the plant that produced enlarged leaf buds in particular. After many generations, this led to plants with huge heads of tightly rolled leaves - plants that we would call cabbage.

Elsewhere, farmers selected for enlarged flowering structures (creating broccoli and cauliflower), enlarged stems (kohlrabi), many small heads (brussels sprouts). This still goes on: in 1993, a Japanese seed company bred broccolini, a hybrid between broccoli and kai-lan, yet another form of this plant species, known as Chinese broccoli.

Though they're all the same species, these various crops are cultivars - different varieties bred to have desirable qualities for human purposes. Virtually all crops have different cultivars, though B. oleracea are especially diverse in appearance and taste (some speculate this is because the plant grew over a wide geographic area to start, so there was more genetic diversity for farmers to tap in to when selectively breeding).

But B. oleracea is standard in that its domesticated forms are much different-looking and more readily edible than its wild form. Wild apples, for instance, are crab apples, and the wild precursor to corn was a hardened grass with just a few kernels. This also happens with domesticated animals: we pick out the qualities we prize, whether it's the ability to produce lots of milk (dairy cows) or friendliness and loyalty (dogs).

All this speaks to one thing: the remarkable power of human breeding and artificial selection. Changes that would take thousands of years or more to occur via natural selection can occur in hundreds when people are at the controls.

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Kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and cabbage are all varieties of a single magical plant species

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Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. In text, video and audio, our reporters explain politics, policy, world affairs, technology, culture, science, the climate crisis, money, health and everything else that matters.

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My example is the Honey Crisp Apple.

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I found a description of strawberry breeding as an example of artificial selection.

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Think about the best strawberry you ever tasted. Sweet, with a flavor that's a greater-than-the-sum mix of overripe peach, underripe grape, burnt caramel, and a little tang to grab the inside of your cheeks.

Of course, not every strawberry tastes that good. Odds are you've been let down. Supermarket berries are bred for size, color, shelf-life, and disease-resistance. On the agronomical trip to market, strawberries have lost some of their flavor. But a new breed of...er...breeders wants to bring glory back to the strawberry, amping up classical breeding techniques with modern genetics.

Virtually every strawberry you've ever eaten is a crossbreed of two species: Fragaria chiloensis, a big-fruited variety that ranges up the western side of the Americas; and F. virginiana a smaller wild berry that grows from Florida to Alaska.

The crossbreed-called Fragaria x ananassa -used to be smaller, squishier, and more susceptible to disease. Getting them ready for supermarket shelves meant selecting for larger size, firmer flesh, and stronger immunity. Farmers wanted even more: plants that produced in larger quantities, with longer stems so they were easier to pick. Produce section stockers wanted brighter colors and shinier skins. None of those qualities necessarily detract from flavor, but the calculus of selective breeding means not every trait ends up in the final result.

Traits like size, color, disease resistance, and firmness are simple compared to flavor. "When you talk about something like flavor, there are so many components: the texture, the sugar content, the types of sugars, the aromatics," says Steve Knapp, the new director of UC Davis's six-decade-old Strawberry Breeding Program. And those sugars (fructose, glucose, sucrose), acids (citric and malic), and fragrant compounds (forget it, strawberries have over 100) come from a sprawling array of genes that interact, modify, and depend on each other to create strawberry-ness.

But that doesn't mean isolating a flavor trait is impossible. First researchers figure out the chemical structure of the flavor they're looking for. Then they cross plants where the flavor chemical is strongly selected with blander plants. Sequence the DNA of both parents and the progeny, and you can start sleuthing. "In every aspect of plant breeding there are traits that are highly heritable, which you have a higher probability of finding the genes for," says Knapp. By cross-referencing the plants's physical appearances and genomes, the researcher can start building a database of which gene codes for which trait.

That's the key to building a new kind of strawberry. Once Knapp-or any strawberry scientist, really-has a large enough library of these gene-trait associations, he can start collecting DNA from plants before breeding them together. It's not genetic engineering, but it does give breeders more confidence that the traits they want will manifest on the other side of the cross. It's faster, cheaper, and more in control. The stakes are high. Strawberries are the fifth most popular fruit in the US-and a $2.2 billion a year crop-but the industry is always at risk of leaving a bad taste in consumers' mouths. "Flavor is paramount. If strawberries don't deliver, people can eat bananas, or blackberries instead," says Mark Bolda, a strawberry expert with the UC Davis program.

Universities have an outsized influence in the strawberry world. Over 60 percent of all the strawberries consumed in the US come from breeds developed at UC Davis (California as a whole grows almost 90 percent of the US's strawberry crop). Most of the rest are developed at the University of Florida's breeding program, located south of Tampa. Though it's much smaller than the California program, Florida's breeding science is already far ahead in terms of flavor genetics. So far, researchers there have found good genetic data for two of those 100 aromatic strawberry compounds. It's not much, but it's an advantage. "We're using the info on the genes to make DNA markers to stack the deck to make for seedlings long before anything goes to field," says Vance Whitaker, a breeder at the University of Florida's program.

Neither Knapp nor Whitaker see much of a future for gene editing techniques in enhancing the flavor profile of future strawberry breeds. Besides the complications in marketing anything with a whiff of genetic engineering, flavor is too complicated to engineer in cut-and-paste fashion. "Plant breeding really operates on the entire genome. We don't have the luxury of working on a gene at a time," says Knapp. In other words, even though they might be able to isolate a gene responsible for a flavor, they wouldn't want to breed for it without pulling along all the related genes it blends with as it goes to protein to chemical to mouth-erupting flavor.

But other genetic factors play a role in flavor too. For instance, strawberries don't ripen off the vine, but in order to ship a lot of times they have to be picked when they are still firm. "One of the things we have to do is make strawberries that can be picked a little more ripe and still have a shelf life," says Whitaker. Which means no amount of genetic engineering will ever make a strawberry that tastes better than one picked at peak ripeness and eaten in the sunshine.

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The Genetic Quest to Make Strawberries Taste Great Again

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Think about the best strawberry you ever tasted. Sweet, with a flavor that's a greater-than-the-sum mix of overripe peach, underripe grape, burnt caramel, and a little tang to grab the inside of your cheeks. Of course, not every strawberry tastes that good. Odds are you've been let down.

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My example is sheep

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Easy care sheep developed by AgResearch were produced using selective breeding. Find out more about selective breeding and why scientists use this method to breed the easy care traits.

Selective breeding: an ancient technique

Selective breeding is a process of selecting the traits you want and mating the animals with those traits together to produce more of the traits in the progeny.

Farmers have used selective breeding to improve the performance of their livestock since animals were first domesticated. Modern methods for breeding specific traits, such as genetic modification and cloning, have emerged since the discovery of DNA. Currently, such methods are only practised in research organisations in New Zealand but may be used in the future. Could modern methods be more effective than selective breeding for producing easy care sheep? New Zealand has many applications for modern biotechnologies, including . ansgenic cows that make modified milk or human therapeutic proteins in their milk

Selecting the traits

Dr David Scobie and his team at AgResearch identified traits they considered desirable for an easy care sheep, such as a bare backside, bare belly, bare head and legs and short tail.

Some traits, such as bare heads and legs, are easily identifiable in common New Zealand breeds, others were discovered by reading the scientific literature on sheep. Some breeds carry many of the desired traits but none carry all of them.

Scientists found the bare belly the most difficult trait to locate because it's not fixed in any particular breed - it occurs from time to time in a number of breeds. This means the genes are recessive. You can learn more about dominant and recessive genes in the useful links at the bottom of the page. The article Finding easy care sheep traits describes the processes that AgResearch went through to get sheep that were more productive and less labour-intensive for farmers.

Inheritance of traits

Each trait is controlled by 1 or more pairs of genes inherited from the parents. The combination of traits expressed by an individual sheep is known as the phenotype.

Read these articles to find out more Cell biology and genetics and Genes involved in footrot.

Heredity and the environment

Measuring heritability

To determine the heritability of particular traits, scientists need to estimate what percentage is due to heredity and how much is due to environment. They calculate this by examining the extent to which related sheep resemble each other in a particular characteristic when they have been raised in the same environment.

Scientists record their observations and give each trait a heritability value between 0 and 1. They define the degree of heritability as:

less than 0.15 - low heritability

0.15 to 0.3 - medium heritability

over 0.3 - high heritability.

These values provide a guide for farmers on heritability of traits - the higher the heritability, the more quickly a trait will be reproduced in subsequent generations. Traits with low heritability may take longer to identify and will therefore take longer to breed into a flock.

When only 1 trait is selected, progress in breeding that trait is much faster than dealing with multiple traits. Selecting more than 1 trait at once is complicated because some traits may be associated - this is referred to as genetic correlation.

Scientists estimate that it would take 5-7 years to breed all the easy care sheep traits into a full flock.

Commercialising the research

Although the scientists bred sheep with the easy care traits, their aim wasn't to produce a new breed of sheep to sell. Their aim was to prove that it could be done, show the benefits and provide information to farmers on how to do it. It is up to farmers to choose whether to create these changes in their own flocks, to any breed of sheep, and be supported in the process.

The project was funded by Meat and Wool New Zealand Ltd and indirectly through research levies previously collected from farmers. The information is available free for farmers on the internet and is promoted through newspapers, magazines, radio, television and agricultural shows such as National Fieldays.

Whether or not farmers use the information and breed easy care traits into their flocks will depend on their perceptions of the economic and welfare benefits. Some may be influenced by their views of what particular sheep breeds should look like, or some may be wary of possible harmful effects in the long term.

An update on easy care sheep

Research on easy care sheep finished after 13 years. Two research flocks were sold in a dispersal sale in March 2014. Sheep breeders and commercial farmers bought the stock. Several of the farmers are maintaining and expanding the wool-less Wiltshire and low cost easy care sheep lines. Farmers value the research sheep's hardiness, increased weight gain and lambing performance. Reduced chemical inputs have a dual appeal - they save the farmers time and money and meet consumer demand for more sustainable products.

Learn more about the discovery of heredity in the article Biology idea 2: The gene.

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Easy care sheep developed by AgResearch were produced using selective breeding. Find out more about selective breeding and why scientists use this method to breed the easy care traits. Selective breeding is a process of selecting the traits you want and mating the animals with those traits together to produce more of the traits in the progeny.

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My example is Race Horses.

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Three hundred years of selective breeding has led to a modern Thoroughbred that performs highly in his specific field and conditions. But it's also led to inbreeding, and with that has come less favorable genetic issues, Australian researchers say.

An analysis of data from more than 135,000 Thoroughbreds racing in Australia from 2000 and 2010 has shown that inbreeding has failed to "alleviate the genetic load" in the breed and possibly put it at a higher risk of developing heritable health problems, said Evelyn Todd, a PhD candidate in the University of Sydney School of Life and Environmental Sciences.

That means Thoroughbreds around the world continue to carry genetic traits that could lead to heritable health problems, Todd said. While all individuals have some risk of such issues, a greater level of inbreeding increases the risk of them occurring.

Most of the inbreeding in Thoroughbreds-up to 80%-can be traced back to just a few founding ancestors, Todd said. Fortunately, as breeders have begun to better understand genetics in the past few decades, there is a trend toward greater genetic improvement in the breed. It's a trend, she said, that would be wise to continue to protect future generations.

"A Thoroughbred horse that may be a superior racetrack performer may still carry some hidden genetic load, so inbreeding to them in future generations may have unexpectedly negative effects on some of their descendants," said Todd. "So, it is important to remember that the consequences of breeding decisions that are being made now will not be seen for another few generations. The average age of reproduction for a Thoroughbred is 10 years, so this means another 30 to 40 years. Favoring one particular bloodline at the cost of eliminating or reducing other bloodlines in the population may have unexpected consequences 'down the track,' so to speak."

Study Findings

Todd and colleagues examined the bloodlines of all 135,572 horses that started in a race in Australia over a 10-year period. For each horse, they calculated the inbreeding coefficient-the amount of inbreeding it has. They also selected 128 horses for high-density genotyping to get a clear view of those horses' genomes and help identify genetic trends, including mutations and abnormalities.

They evaluated each horse's racing performance (yes, all 135,572 of them) to see how it related to that horse's genetics and inbreeding coefficient. To do that, Todd said they investigated five aspects they considered representative of a horse's talent, consistency, and soundness: total earnings, earnings per start, career length, total number of starts, and winning strike rates (number of wins compared to the total number of starts).

They found a lingering genetic load "even after many generations of inbreeding," Todd said. But they also found that multiple levels of inbreeding have "fine-tuned" the Thoroughbred for its sport.

Effects of Inbreeding in Thoroughbreds

"The Thoroughbred breed was founded and has since been selectively bred for the purpose of elite racing performance," she said. "When racing over the distances of 1,000 to 3,200 meters (about 5 to nearly 16 furlongs), Thoroughbreds would be expected to outperform any other horse breed. In our study we found evidence that selective breeding, over time, has increased genetic variants which improve athletic performance."

That's made the Thoroughbred particularly adapted to modern racing's demands.

"Due to the change in racing conditions over time, selective pressures on Thoroughbred horses have also changed over time," Todd said. "If an elite Thoroughbred from the 1700s or 1800s, such as Eclipse (who was born in 1764), competed today, would he still be an outstanding racehorse? I would suggest maybe not. Hence, the changing racing structure over time means that the selection for elite racehorses has also changed over time. This explains why we haven't seen a lot of improvement in the breed over time, but also why we found evidence of improvement over the last 20 years (when horse racing has been more similar to what it is today, so selection has favored horses that would excel in current racing conditions)."

In essence, breeders have developed an animal, through selective breeding including inbreeding, that's perfectly fit for his purpose. However, that comes with some consequences. For example, the horse might not be well-adapted to conditions outside his wheelhouse (i.e., a sprinter vs. a distance horse, dirt vs. turf tracks, etc.), or he might have a certain reputation for characteristics some people might consider negative.

"Characteristics such as flightiness may be common in the Thoroughbred breed because they may be a contributing factor to their superior athletic performance," Todd said. "On the other hand, there has been almost no selection on Thoroughbred horses for characteristics such as cold tolerance, and considering the breed was founded through stallions imported from the Middle East, it is hardly surprising that they are not adapted to survive well in freezing European winters. And Thoroughbred horses always race and train in shoes, so would not have been selected for robustness when barefoot."

And likewise, as their study indicates, the inbreeding in Thoroughbreds could also put the horses at greater risk of inheritable problems -their genetic load, Todd said.

"Genetic load is the presence of unfavorable genetic variants in a population-for example, mutations which can decrease the health and survival chances of an animal," Todd said. "All animals have two copies of each chromosome, so often if an animal has one copy of a negative genetic variant and one copy of the normal variant, it will have no effect on their health. For this reason, rare negative variants are hard to completely breed out of a population, so almost all animal populations will carry some genetic load.

"Inbreeding will increase the chance of an individual inheriting two copies of a rare negative variant from a common ancestor," she continued. "For this reason, inbreeding to Thoroughbreds that have superior racing performance may have unexpected negative effects in future generations if some of their descendants inherit two copies of a hidden negative genetic variant."

The Bottom Line

This information isn't meant to accuse Thoroughbred breeders, however, Todd insisted. On the contrary, compared to other domestic animal breeding programs, the Thoroughbred is relatively well off.

"All domestic populations of animals have some level of inbreeding and carry genetic load," she said. "The genetic load of the Thoroughbred population probably hasn't increased since the breed was founded in the 18th century (and, in fact, it may have decreased). But our study shows that some negative variants are still present in the population. Previous studies have shown that there are high levels of genetic load in most domestic animal populations, such as breed dogs."

Thoroughbred breeders have done comparatively well in maintaining genetic diversity in the breed, she said. They've succeeded in developing a high-performing horse despite the ongoing genetic load. And going forward, with today's genetic knowledge, they can aim to continue to improve performance while avoiding negative genetic consequences.

"The Thoroughbred horse population is still thriving and viable," she said. "The main purpose of our study was to assist Thoroughbred breeders in making decisions to improve their chance of a successful outcome-that is, breeding an elite racehorse-and assist in breeding decisions to maintain and improve the quality of Thoroughbred horses."

The study, " Founder-specific inbreeding depression affects racing performance in Thoroughbred horses," was published in Scientific Reports.

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Inbreeding in Thoroughbreds: Positives and Negatives - The Horse

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Three hundred years of selective breeding has led to a modern Thoroughbred that performs highly in his specific field and conditions. But it's also led to inbreeding, and with that has come less favorable genetic issues, Australian researchers say.

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My example is Cats like Grumpy Cat

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The short, upturned muzzle and glassy doll eyes that we've come to associate with cat breeds such as Persians or Scottish Folds may look adorable to us - but this unique face shape can come with unique complications.

Libby Joy and her younger brother Finnigan are living the good life: They have a family who loves them, and plenty of cool surfaces to lie on, but, like other flat-faced cats, these Instagram-famous kitties require some help doing normal everyday activities.

"They definitely require more care than your domestic shorthair would: Daily brushing, daily eye cleans and occasional baths," Lindsay Meredith, their owner, tells The Dodo. "They need to have their eyes cleaned very regularly because their eyes drain quite a bit. We also have eye drops from the veterinarian that we have to give them occasionally."

Flat-faced cats, known as brachycephalic cats, can experience a number of health consequences due to this genetic trait that has, over the last 50 years, become a standard in the cat-breeding industry, explains Dr. Ladan Mohammad-Zadeh, critical care specialist at DoveLewis Veterinary Emergency and Specialty Hospital.

So what does it really mean to be a brachycephalic cat?

"Brachycephalic cats are flat-faced cats that have distorted skulls, like Persians and Himalayans. Other breeds can include the Scottish Fold, Burmese and exotic shorthair," Mohammad-Zadeh tells The Dodo. "Essentially, their head shape can lead to health issues, which are very similar to the health issues brachycephalic dogs [pugs, Shih Tzus and Pekingese] experience." The term "brachycephalic" refers to the distinctive skull shape, from the Greek roots "brachy" meaning "shortened" and "cephalic" meaning "head."

The mutation can come at a cost that many don't factor in when awww-ing over doll-faced felines, such as Grumpy Cat and Snoopybabe, on the internet. Though Grumpy Cat's permanently displeased expression is not caused by his breed, but instead a number of genetic abnormalities, including an underbite and feline dwarfism (Grumpy Cat's parents were mixed-breed domestic shorthairs), the celebri-cat kicked off a craze for this doll-like appearance nonetheless.

Here's what you need to know if you're thinking of adopting one of these distinctive felines:

Health consequences of "doll-faced" cats

Just as pugs have a tendency to snort and huff, if your cat's face has that pushed-in look, he may experience breathing difficulties. "Breathing problems are the main health concern for brachycephalic cats, and the severity of the issue depends on the shape of their skull - essentially how flat-faced they are," Mohammad-Zadeh explains.

"If you are a light sleeper, they do tend to snore. Finn also snorts a lot when he is playing," Meredith notes.

The shorter-than-normal skull doesn't leave a lot of room for the cat's mouth tissue, and could lead to smaller nostrils and nasal passages, which can contribute to airway obstruction and respiratory issues down the road.

A smaller mouth means teeth have to compete for space, which can also lead to dental issues. "Their teeth can be overcrowded, which causes issues like teeth rotating or overlapping," Mohammad-Zadeh explains. "Sometimes they also experience a mandibular bite, where the lower jaw is longer than the upper jaw."

This genetic predilection for underbites, which can make a cat look like his jaw is jutting out, does not usually require treatment, but it's always good to get your kitty checked out if he has exposed fangs.

Those glossy, marble-like eyes and the connecting tear ducts come with their own set of issues.

"Their eyes protrude further than other cats and, therefore, are less protected," Mohammad-Zadeh notes. "This allows fur, dust and other debris to get into the eyes more regularly. Many of these cats also experience consistent discharge from their eyes."

How to care for a flat-faced cat

"There's really nothing specific that cat owners can do to help prevent these issues," Mohammad-Zadeh explains. "But they can have a heightened awareness of the potential problems these cats face and pair that with regular vet visits and checkups."

As with any pet, routine vet checkups are the best prevention, and if you see something unusual going on, don't wait to get it checked out.

"If you start to see that your cat is squinting, having trouble breathing, having trouble eating or experiencing any abnormal health issues, don't delay a visit to the vet," Mohammad-Zadeh says. "Your doctor may see something that you didn't notice at home."

To keep your feline's face clean and free of discharge, owners can wipe their cat's face regularly with a warm, damp cloth, Mohammad-Zadeh recommends. Persians that tend to have trouble with eye debris may need special drops. "Occasionally their tears will get dark and thick and the drops help clear that up," Meredith notes.

Flat-faced cat owners should also pay special attention to their cats' eating habits, as their short muzzle may prove a challenge when scooping up dry or wet food.

"They have to root around more for food and put their whole face in the bowl due to the flatness, which makes it harder for them to pick up individual pieces," Meredith explains. "I've had several cats in my life and these are the only two Persians I've ever had - and the only two that threw so much food out of the dishes when they ate."

The long fur can also get in the way of these everyday activities, so regular grooming becomes extra important to keep your cat in tip-top shape.

"Finnigan has a habit of dipping his whole face into the water dish if the bowl is deep enough. This caused him to have neck/chin fur that was constantly soaked," Meredith adds. "We have finally figured out how to prevent this by using a much more shallow and narrow dish for his water and keeping his neck fur trimmed up."

Special care and plenty of snuggles will help keep your smushed-face cats purring in their special extra-loud way.

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Flat-Faced Cats Are Even Weirder Than They Look

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The short, upturned muzzle and glassy doll eyes that we've come to associate with cat breeds such as Persians or Scottish Folds may look adorable to us - but this unique face shape can come with unique complications.

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My example is super cows designed to survive hot climates

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The Brazilian Super Cow - Supersized Earth - Episode 3 - BBC One

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My example is

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If you do a Google search for "Darwin bird" you will find endless references to the finches of the Galápagos Islands. But it took a long time for Charles Darwin to recognize their significance. When he collected them he did not even realize that they were related, considering some to be "grosbeaks," others true finches, and others blackbirds. He even considered one warblerlike finch to be a kind of wren.

In fact, during and soon after the historic around-the-world voyage of the HMS Beagle, from 1831 to 1836, Darwin had not yet come to the idea that different islands might be inhabited by different species. As his biographer Janet Browne put it, "He experienced no legendary moment of inspiration." He was more interested in butterflies. When he returned to London, Darwin dispersed his enormous collection of specimens to the specialists at the Royal Zoological Society. It was only then that ornithologist John Gould told him that the Galápagos birds he had thought were a mixture of blackbirds, grosbeaks, and finches were actually 12 species of finches.

A better case might be made that the most important bird in Darwin's studies was the humble domestic pigeon. In fact, one of the first readers of the manuscript that would become On the Origin of Species, in 1859, disliked most of the book intensely. Whitwell Elwrin wrote to the publisher, John Murray, and called the text "a wild & foolish piece of imagination . . . for an outline it is too much & for a thorough discussion of the question it is not near enough." Rather than tell the publisher to reject the manuscript, he consulted Darwin's friend, geologist Charles Lyell, who had already suggested that the book should focus on Darwin's observations on pigeons. Elwrin recommended that Darwin write a short book on pigeons. "Everybody is interested in pigeons," he told him, and a book like this would "be reviewed in every journal in the kingdom and soon be on every table."

The Origin of Pigeons? Although it sounds funny today, the breeding of fancy pigeons and other pedigreed animals was something of a craze in Victorian England, one that crossed class lines, attracting enthusiasts ranging from miners and weavers to Queen Victoria. When Darwin began studying and breeding pigeons in 1856, he soon became as enthusiastic about the wonderfully varied breeds as any working-class fancier. As Janet Browne says, "Darwin loved his pigeons . . . he spent hours reading self-help manuals and books by breeders to make sure he was doing the right thing and visiting shows and exhibitions to see what was available. He found it very entertaining hobnobbing with breeding experts and trying to exude an air of practical knowledge as he leaned over cages of absurdly ruffled feathers. The esoteric world of pigeon fanciers seemed to him delightfully fresh and curious."

At first he was not without a little upper-class condescension. He wrote to Huxley, "I sat one evening in a gin palace in the Borrough amongst a set of pigeon fanciers, when it was hinted that Mr. Bolt had crossed his Pouters with Runts to gain size: and if you had seen the solemn, the mysterious, and awful shakes of the head, which all the fanciers gave at this scandalous proceeding, you would have recognized how little crossing has had to do with improving breeds, and how dangerous for endless generations the process was. All this was brought home far more vividly than by pages of mere statements & c."

Soon, however, he met more scholarly and "respectable" fanciers. His most important friend in the pigeon world became the journalist and editor William Tegetmeier. Their association lasted for more than 10 years and was mutually beneficial. Tegetmeier provided Darwin with specimens, information, and contacts. Tegetmeier, who seems to have been a bit of a social climber, loved to brag about his intimacy with Darwin.

Darwin's family fell in love with pigeons as well. His daughter Henrietta later wrote, "I can still recall their different characteristics: a cross old fantail when taking food from my hand liked to take a good peck & hurt me if he could. The Pouter pigeon was good-natured but not clever, and I remember a hen Jacobin which I considered rather feeble-minded." Darwin wanted all of his friends to be as delighted with his pigeons as he was. He wrote Lyell, "I hope Lady Lyell & yourself will remember whenever you want a little rest & have time how very glad we should be to see you here. I will show you my pigeons! Which is the greatest treat, in my opinion, which can be offered to human beings."

Although his study of pigeons informed The Origin of Species, Darwin's real "pigeon book," The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, did not come out until 1868. Its long and beautifully illustrated section on pigeons is still readable and relevant to both naturalists and pigeon fanciers today.

He begins, "I have been led to study domestic pigeons with particular care because the evidence that all the domestic races are descended from one known source is far clearer than with any other anciently domesticated animal. Secondly, because many treatises in several languages, some of them old, have been written on the pigeon, so that we are enabled to trace the history of several breeds. And lastly, because, the amount of variation has been extraordinarily great. . . . I have kept alive all the most distinct breeds, which I could procure in England or from the Continent; and have prepared skeletons of all. I received skins from Persia, and a large number from India and other quarters of the world. Since my admission to two of the London pigeon-clubs I have received the kindest assistance from some of the most eminent amateurs. . . . I do not hesitate to affirm that some domestic races of the rock-pigeon differ fully as much from each other in external characters as do the most distinct natural genera."

Every one of the illustrated breeds in Variation exists and is shown today. Some, such as the English pouter and the African owl, have not visibly changed in the last 150 years. Others, such as the carrier, barb, and fantail, have become even more exaggerated and differentiated from the ancestral Rock Pigeon by the strange and unnatural selection of shows, just as dogs and other domestic animals have. The carriers' already exaggerated beak wattle has grown larger than a walnut; such birds are prone to colds and eye diseases-so much so that in Germany legislation was passed limiting the size of the wattle in the breed! The barb, in Darwin's day a short-billed bird with large circular eye ceres, now has such a short bill that it is unable to feed its own young (foster parents are required) and has a carrier-like wattle cramped between the short bill and its forehead. The engraving of the fantail in Variation shows a bird with a turkeylike fan that today's birds possess, but Darwin's bird has a graceful, erect, swan-like neck. Today's birds carry their heads so far back against their tails that from the front their heads are invisible. From that vantage point they look like a headless ball in front of a circular tail.

Such changes would probably have fascinated Darwin, who wrote, "There is hardly any exception to the rule that those characters vary most which are now most valued and attended to by fanciers, and which consequently are now being improved by continued selection." Whether such exaggeration is good for the individual birds is another question. The breeding of domestic show animals is a biological art but can be warped by too much passion for the extreme and strange. One need not go to the lengths of the Germans. A pigeon fancier all my life, I gave up breeding modern carriers because curing their constant colds became depressing. Darwin himself showed that crossing the extreme varieties produced something very much like the ancestral Rock Pigeon. Most show pigeons would not survive long in the wild, but their descendents, common "street pigeons," inhabit cities and cliffs everywhere in the world. Except for their variable colors and slightly larger size, they resemble the wild Rock Pigeon, which they have displaced in all but the most remote places. Some scientists consider them to be a "superdove," a bird stronger and more adaptable than even its wild ancestors. Evolution, of course, is never stasis. I have seen wild Rock Pigeons only on remote cliffs on the Euphrates, but "superdoves" thrive in environments ranging from the sweltering streets of Houston to the 30-below-zero squares of Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia, in winter.

But the domestic pigeon still holds a unique charm for both fanciers and naturalists. The genetics of its colors alone support a quarterly newsletter for scientists and enthusiasts. Some show people, like dog breeders fixated on Westminster, pursue ever-more-exaggerated standards. Others prefer less "improved" birds. I started out with modern racing homers, a breed developed in Belgium and England in the early 1800s, originally a carrier of messages but also a racing competitor. It is a stout, athletic bird. Most non-fanciers see little difference between it and a common pigeon, though it is larger and more muscular, and has a larger head and wattles than the Rock Pigeon. Such a bird can survive very well in the wild. The genes of lost racers probably contribute to the continuing evolution of the "superdove."

Over the past 20 or 30 years, naturalist and breeder friends of mine have become fascinated by the ancient, "unimproved" pigeon breeds of the Silk Road and the Mediterranean. Such breeds may have existed for thousands of years. They have enough diversity to satisfy Charles Darwin; in fact, many-such as the English barb-are exactly as Darwin, or Shakespeare (who wrote about them), saw them. I have Catalonian tumblers-small pigeons in a dazzling variety of colors-that are agile enough to evade marauding Cooper's Hawks; Syrian owls that are short-beaked, similarly agile, and, unlike modern show owls, can feed their own young; and English barbs, which are virtual duplicates of the illustrations of them in Darwin's Variation. I have Spanish pouters that inflate their globes just as much as do modern show pouters. But they must remain athletic, because they are used in the remarkable Spanish sport of "thieving" in which the males compete to seduce marked females to their home lofts. All of these breeds remain functional but retain enough diversity and beauty to satisfy the most aesthetically-minded fancier. And, unlike the often-inbred champions of pigeon and dog shows, they retain, as Darwin noted, enough genetic variation to make each new clutch a suspenseful delight. Show pigeons often resemble clones.

To a naturalist and biophiliac, the humble domestic pigeon can come to occupy a necessary place in one's life, as it did in Darwin's. Beautiful and ever-changing, they are a backyard microcosm that embodies Darwin's most fundamental quote: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Stephen J. Bodio is the author of several books, including one on pigeons titled Aloft: A Meditation on Pigeons and Pigeon Flying.

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If you do a Google search for "Darwin bird" you will find endless references to the finches of the Galápagos Islands. But it took a long time for Charles Darwin to recognize their significance.

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My example is Corn

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Fruits and vegetables have changed a lot since the onset of agriculture 10,000 years ago, as generation after generation of farmers artificially bred crops to select for more desirable traits like size and taste.

But that change can be hard to visualize. So James Kennedy, a chemistry teacher in Australia, created some terrific infographics to show just how drastic the evolution has been. This one, for instance, shows how corn has changed in the last 9,000 years - from a wild grass in the early Americas known as teosinte to the plump ears of corn we know today:

The evolution of corn

The evolution of corn (maize) is a fascinating story. For a long time, scientists couldn't figure out where domesticated corn originally came from - it doesn't look like anything that grows in the wild. It took serious sleuthing by geneticists, botanists, and archaeologists to figure out that maize split off from teosinte grass some 9,000 years ago. (The two are surprisingly similar at the DNA level, differing by just a handful of genes.)

As maize became domesticated in Mesoamerica, it was radically altered through selective breeding. Early farmers would examine their plants and save the seeds of those that were larger or tastier, or whose kernels were easier to grind. By 4000 BC, cobs were already an inch long. Within just a few thousand years, cobs had grown to many times that size. Later on, plant hybridization became an important breeding method to further cultivate certain traits.

Nowadays, corn is grown all over the planet, and humans are still making changes using more advanced breeding techniques. In the 1980s, for instance, seed companies turned to genetic engineering - so, for instance, scientists inserted genes from Bt soil bacteria into corn to help the plant ward off pests. And some researchers are hoping to develop corn varieties that can withstand drought.

The evolution of watermelon

Here's another great graphic from Kennedy. Modern-day watermelons don't look anything like their distant ancestors from Southern Africa. That, too, is the result of thousands of years of breeding. Yet a few of the biggest advances also came in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, when crop scientists helped breed varieties that were resistant to disease and had a thicker rind - allowing watermelons to be grown all over the country.

Even to this day, we're still producing new types of watermelon - like the black Densuke watermelon grown in Japan. And crop scientists have produced seedless watermelons by adding chemicals to double a watermelon's chromosomes and then breeding the result with a normal watermelon.*

The evolution of peaches

And here are peaches, which started out in China and were selected for size and juiciness over thousands of years. Note that the water content of peaches has changed drastically in just 6,000 years.

Mind you, not all attempts at selective breeding turn out so well. As Sarah Yager recently wrote at the Atlantic, apple growers in the United States during the 20th century tried to breed Red Delicious apples to be as bright and shiny as possible and stay on shelves for as long as possible without noticeable bruising. The result? "As genes for beauty were favored over those for taste, the skins grew tough and bitter around mushy, sugar-soaked flesh." Nowadays, as storage and transport have become more advanced, tastier apple varieties like the Honeycrisp or Gala are surpassing the Red Delicious.

(Thanks to Calestous Juma for the pointer to Kennedy's blog.)

Further reading:

How big government helps big dairy sell milk

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Here's what 9,000 years of breeding has done to corn, peaches, and other crops

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Fruits and vegetables have changed a lot since the onset of agriculture 10,000 years ago, as generation after generation of farmers artificially bred crops to select for more desirable traits like size and taste. But that change can be hard to visualize.

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My example is Corn