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Asked by EM26 to Siana, Sara, Richard, Peter, Carolyn on 17 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by fluffyunicorns19.
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Richard Unwin answered on 17 Nov 2015:
EM26,
that’s a good question. Its not always the case (some pure breeds will outlive some mixed breeds) but in general mixed breeds tend to live longer. This is likely because the purebred dogs maintain and pass on genes that might leave then at higher risk of disease. The pup has one copy of the gene from mum and one from dad but if their both ‘faulty’ that pup will inherit risk of disease. In mixed breeds, even 1st generation crosses, even if you get the faulty gene from one parent you’re unlikely to get a faulty gene from the other parent, so your risk of disease is lower, so are likely to live longer. There’s a lot of disagreement about this in the dog world though, apparently. Does that help?
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Sara Falcone answered on 19 Nov 2015:
Hello 🙂
Good question! and that is true for both dogs and cats.
It happens that when the breeders started to select to “create” a breed they carried some genes that give diseases as well. Because they wanted pure breed dogs to look all the same (as much as possible), the selection never really changed and always the same genes were passed, including the ones that give diseases.
This is true in most cases, then there are some breeds where the classic features are actually malformations themselves (like for all dogs and cats with stumpy faces).
In mixed breeds all this doesn’t happen of course, and nature “selects” randomly which genes to pass.
I hope it makes sense 🙂
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