DesertFox
07-20-2008, 04:11 PM
White horses, such as racing’s Desert Orchid or the Lone Ranger’s Silver, are actually mutants whose defective DNA carries a gene that accelerates ageing and rapidly turns their coats grey, scientist have discovered.
Such horses would probably never have survived in the wild but for one particular white horse, born thousands of years ago, which so caught the eye of ancient humans that they protected it and did their best to breed more, according to a new study.
They were so successful that the same horse became the ancestor of almost all white horses born since. It means that Silver and Desert Orchid, which won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1989 and the King George IV Chase four times, were probably related.
The key finding of the researchers, at Uppsala University in Sweden, is that almost all white horses seem to carry an identical gene, implying that it originated in a single common ancestor.
White horses are unlikely to have survived in the wild. The white colouring makes them easy prey for predators, while the gene sharply raises the risk of such horses getting skin cancer. This implies that humans probably intervened to make sure they flourished.
More (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4364169.ece)
Such horses would probably never have survived in the wild but for one particular white horse, born thousands of years ago, which so caught the eye of ancient humans that they protected it and did their best to breed more, according to a new study.
They were so successful that the same horse became the ancestor of almost all white horses born since. It means that Silver and Desert Orchid, which won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1989 and the King George IV Chase four times, were probably related.
The key finding of the researchers, at Uppsala University in Sweden, is that almost all white horses seem to carry an identical gene, implying that it originated in a single common ancestor.
White horses are unlikely to have survived in the wild. The white colouring makes them easy prey for predators, while the gene sharply raises the risk of such horses getting skin cancer. This implies that humans probably intervened to make sure they flourished.
More (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4364169.ece)