Why are Labrador Retrievers so food obsessed and often fat?
Eleanor Raffan of the University of Cambridge and her colleagues believe a missing gene is at work. The gene in question is called POMC and in many labradors a chunk of DNA was more commonly missing in obese Labs than in lean ones. Out of 411 Labs in the United Kingdom and United States, 22 percent carried the deletion mutation. Looking across other breeds, only Labradors and flat coat retrievers, a close relative, carried the gene variant, which also correlated with greater weight and food begging tendencies.
One side effect of Labrador and Flat-coated retriever food obsessiveness is that these dogs are more food motivated, and thus easier to train. Assistance Labs and Flat-coats more commonly had the deletion gene than rank-and-file Labs and Flat-coats selected as pets.
1 comment:
Eureka! I've long posited that Labs would be good models for the study of obesity, quite likely genetically based. Propensity to blubber is not really surprising given their origin traces to dogs who routinely swam for hours in the Bay of Fundy.
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