Talk:Dobermann
From Academic Kids
Why this page is named Dobermann, not Doberman or Doberman Pinscher
I've moved the page to Dobermann because the breed is known by this name by the kennel clubs of Australia, New Zealand, the UK and by the international association (the FCI). The American and Canadian kennel clubs use "Doberman Pinscher", so I think we should go with the majority. I hope this is OK with everyone -- sannse 08:37 Apr 5, 2003 (UTC)
Other topics
I can't really get a good image layout here because there is so little text for an article with a table and two other images. What we really need is more text for balance - any volunteers? ;) In particular we need information on cropped ears - we have two images but no explanation. This is not a subject I am likely to give a NPOV on, but I'll put it on my to-do-list anyway. If someone with more knowledge and some neutral views on the subject can get there before me that would be great -- sannse 21:41, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I've moved this from the article... it doesn't really add much infomation. A diagram showing which part of the ear is cropped would be more useful IMO. fabiform | talk 21:43, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I'm not quite understanding the genetic description of how the colorations work. So let me explain from the beginning what I'm not getting: In a simple situation, the dog inherits one gene from its mother and one from its father, so it *always* has two genes. The form of each gene can be dominant or recessive; e.g., let's say that green is the dominant color for frogs and red is the recessive color. If the frog has GG, GR, or RG, then it is green; if it has RR, it is red. But in this case we're talking about the dog having 4 color variants, which you can't have in this situation--even if the combination of an R and G somehow makes a chartreuse frog rather than green, there are only 3 color combinations possible-- green (GG), chartreuse (RG or GR), or red (RR).
- Right.
I think what you're saying is that there are 2 separate *sets* of genes that control the color.
- Yes, that's what I meant to say. I guess the proper term would be two genotypes, which I'm not sure that I used in the article. I was trying to avoid "genotype" and "phenotype", as they seemed a little too technical; but you're right. The Dobermann has TWO color genotypes, one (let's say D & d) that determines if the coat stays black or blue, let's call it "color": (DD, Dd, dD are all black or blue, and dd is either red or fawn). And the other (G & g) determines something else, let's call it "hue". So, Gg, GG, gG are all either black or red, and gg is either blue or fawn. Combining these two genotypes, we'd get:
- DDGG: Black
- DDGg: Black
- DDgG: Black
- DDgg: Blue
- DdGG: Black
- DdGg: Black
- DdgG: Black
- Ddgg: Blue
- dDGG: Black
- dDGg: Black
- dDgG: Black
- dDgg: Blue
- ddGG: Red
- ddGg: Red
- ddgG: Red
- ddgg: Fawn
- (BTW, the way I call them "color" and "hue", there are official names for both these genotypes--I don't think either of those are correct, as I just made them up for this example. I've got a book somewhere that gives the specific genotype names; I'll look it up if you think it'll make the article easier for the reader to understand. Or, do you think all this is getting too technical for an article about a dog species?)
- Above, you can see that 9/16 alleles (is that the right term?) produce the most common, Black Doberman. Blue and Red are each produced by 3/16 of the alleles. And the last 1/16, the rarest, makes Fawn. The genes aren't all evenly dispersed though: The "d" recessive gene is far more common than the "g" recessive, which explains why Red Dobermans are so much more prevalent than Blue ones. The Blue and Fawn Doberman is born far less frequently than 3/16 and 1/16 of the time, respectively, due to the rarity of the "g". However (I'm not 100% sure), I think the distribution between "D" and "d" is roughly 50/50, because the Red Doberman does seem to occur about 25% of the Black. For example, my dog was one of 13. 3 of them were red. Neither parent was. Again, if you think we should include this, I'll have to do some more researching.
In other words, there's one gene pair that's GG, GR, RG, or RR; there's another pair that can be, say, either A or B, where A is dominant, so there can also be an AA, AB, BA, and BB. So I *think* what you're saying is that if the first gene pair contains G (GG, RG, GR), then it is what you're calling "dominant", and if the second gene pair has A anywhere (AA,AB,BA) then it is "dominant", and then the RR and BB versions are "recessive".
- Yes, that's how I was using the two terms. Something's only considered to be a recessive phenotype (physical manifestation of the genes) if both the genes in the genotype are recessive (i.e., "carriers" [AB, BA, RG, GR] are generally not considered to have the recessive gene, even though they carry it). Maybe we should use the terms "homozygous" and "heterozygous" instead? Again--how technical do you think we should make this? I mean, as long as we link it to pages on genetics, I think it should be OK to use technical terms when discussing genetic variations, no?
This does give me four color possibilities. Is this right? If so, I'm glad to try rephrasing things so that it's clearer because it took me a while to figure this out. Elf | Talk 20:28, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Yup, be my guest. It took me a long time to figure out how to phrase it all so that it didn't sound confusing. But, even after writing it, I felt it was likely going to be hard to understand, especially for people who know nothing about Dobermans and/or genetics. I figured I should just put it down there and that someone would eventually come along and make it less confusing. BTW, in case you found the part on albinism confusing...ANY of the 16 combinations above can lead to an albino Doberman, since the recessive homozygous albinism gene inhibits the pigment proteins from being created in the first place, no matter what color the pigment is (just like in humans--there are white albinos, black albinos, Asian albinos, etc, and they all look "whiter" than any of them would otherwise look).64.12.117.16 03:23, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
