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Naked animals - How ugly!

Habit is a strong factor and dims a lot of personal opinions.

People's soul is embarrassed. Animals without coat, that must be forbidden! Dogs and cats must have hairs. It was always like that, and it must stay like that!
The naked mole rat, we do not know it, thus it does not concern us.

Habit keeps our opinions fixed very often, that we do not reflect our prejudices from time to time or even might dismiss them.

But these animals are terribly ugly!

Beauty is relative and changes every time and in every style.

An example:
Today women must be slender, in the baroque plump and thick women were in. Today everyone wants to be like a model.
We admire the paintings of Rubens and Rembrandt and call them art. And, we are not disturbed by those thick and plump women with their hyper-dimensionally large abdomens.
Do we admire these paintings, because they are old or because the painters are said to be great artists or because the paintings are so expensive?

Another example:
In the 60-th and 70-th it was up to date in men to have long hairs. Today everybody must be neat and nice, and men with long hairs are often called untidy and not groomed.
And, however, we admire the paintings of Raffaello and Titian, where men had long hairs. And, however, we admire the Beatles, regardless of their long hairs.
Do we admire those, because we are told that Raffaello and Titian are famous painters? Do we admire those, because everybody values the Beatles to be cult?

Do we think those animals are ugly, because the majority tells us what we have to think?

What is beauty?

Is beauty in any way connected with, what we are used to see?
Is beauty, however, connected with nature?
Is beauty in any connection with that, what is shown us by the media every day?
Is beauty based on our personal taste and preferences?
That is a philosophical question, which was answered differently in every epoch.

Aren't these dogs beautiful, if one looks to their smooth, shiny and satin-like glimmering skin?
Aren't these cats beautiful, whose skin is pleasingly soft and warm to touch?
Aren't these dogs and cats beautiful, where one can see their smooth and well organized musculature?
Aren't these dogs and cats beautiful, where one can see every motion and mimic?

Is this mole rat not beautiful, which is equipped so well by nature that it builds its own colony in the earth, many kilometers long, with its own tools?
Are we able to construct such wonderful labyrinths with our own hands and teeth?

Some interesting links concerning beauty:
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Theories of Beauty to the mid-nineteenth century, Dictionary of the History of Ideas
Face Research

But, these animals are opposite to any nature!

Aha, the naked mole rat, only just 4 million years old, is opposite to any nature, because it has no hairs.
And, despite our opinion, this animal is on the List of endangered animals, number IUCN 9987. Why? Which benefit do we have from this animal?

Must dogs have a coat? Or are we only used that they have a coat?
Does more than 3000 years survival mean anything to us?
Are these dog breeds not a precious value of culture which has to be protected?
Does it have any value for us, that these dogs have been the dogs of the Aztecs and Incas, whose buildings we struggle to conserve and for whose cities we are still searching today?

Must cats have a coat? Or are we only used that they have a coat?
How can we decide, that spontaneous mutations, which occurred in Russia, do have less value for us and thus are not allowed to exist in our area?
How can we decide, that spontaneous mutations, which occurred in Canada, do have less value for us and thus are not allowed to exist in our area?
Is it not frightening and significant for us today that we dare to neglect the right to exist of those spontaneous and natural mutations?
Does such an opinion, that we simply want to decide about the right to exist, and thus also deciding about reproduction and evolution, not call back the memory on certain times, which we should have overcome already by far?
Is it not strange, that we want to decide so simply for other countries and their naturally appearing creatures, because we just believe that our way of thinking and looking at things, at the world, at the nature, etc. is the only true one?

What is nature? What is natural?

The term nature is worn hard today without thinking, what we mean with nature and natural today.
The term nature is overloaded with very subjective (prejudiced) values, which are in in our society, in our religion, in politics or in political ecology.

Nature and culture - the one being and existing without interference by humans, and the other one which has been made by humans. That is only one explanation, what nature might be.
If the human itself belongs to nature, is subject of centuries lasting scientific and philosophical discussions.

A. O. Lovejoy writes that he has found at least 66 different meanings for nature. Oldemeyer writes in 1983 that nature cannot be comprised as an entire unit, it has to be seen as an open system, where humans and their cultures are one part of nature, he calls that integrative understanding.

Nature has very controversial meanings in science:

Thus we may read about:

If someone claims, he is a natural scientist, then he must be a scientist, who deals with nature.

But, when such breeds are forbidden, then such a scientist seems to restrict his field of work only to an extract of nature or he seems not to be willing to reflect these different - and often controversial - discussions about, what nature and what natural is.
How can one already after 40, 20 years decide upon breeds, which developed without human interference due to a spontaneous mutation and which even have not developed, when speaking about development in terms of evolution? Which (not reflected) understanding of what evolution is, is the base for such an opinion?
Which understanding, what nature is, is the base for such a prohibition?

This is just a very small extract of questions, which must be asked, if someone seriously asks himself, what his opinion about nature is, how he wants to deal with spontaneous mutations occurring without any human interference.

Some interesting links upon this subject:
will be provided.

But these naked animals have so many defects and problems.

Let us come back to the problematic described in part 1 and part 2.

Naked dogs and cats are said to be prone for sunburn and may suffer from severe injuries of the skin.

Citation from Gutachten zur Auslegung des § 11 des Tierschutzgesetzes from 02.06.1999, expert group for animal protection and breeding of domestic animals, issued by the ministry BMELF, Bonn, January 2000 (shortly called "expertise")
page 21:

"Die Hunde haben eine sehr empfindliche Haut (Sonnenbrand, Verletzungen, Fliegenbefall im Sommer, Allergien) und zeigen klimatische Adaptionsstörungen."

In English:
Expertise from 02.06.1999 How to interpret § 11 of the animal protection law,
page 21:
"The dogs have a very sensitive skin (sunburn, injuries, infested with flies in summer, allergies) and display climatic adaptive dysfunctions.

From where and based on which literature does such a statement come?
If one looks to the literature list in this expertise, there is not cited any article concerning sunburn to proof this statement.

In general: The most actual article dealing with defects in naked dogs and cited in this expertise dates from the year 1987, which dates back already 12 years - seen in relation to the date of issue of this expertise.

It is quite interesting that the researches of Tohru Kimura and Kunio Doi dating from the years 1994 - 1998 concerning sunburn are not cited in this expertise. These researches were available already for 4 years, when compared to the expertise's date of issue (This has something to do with scientific correctness).

Kimura T, Doi K: Dorsal skin reactions to sunlight and artificial ultraviolet light in hairless descendants of Mexican hairless dogs.
Exp. Anim. 44(4), 293-299, Oct. 1995
page 299:

"Histologically, as reported previously (1994), the dermatological characteristics of hairless dogs are obviously different from those of nude mice and other hairless animals (Remark: The reference in this research is only made to literature about naked mice).

In conclusion, it was clarified in the present study that the degree of severity of dermatological changes in hairless dogs depended on the kind of UV light source. That is, solar exposure provoked remarkable pigmentation while artificial UV irradiation brought about severe sunburn reaction in the skin of hairless dogs."

May this conclusion also be applied to naked cats, that their skin differs from the skin of naked mice?

Are dogs referenced in this "expertise", which have been in a solar studio??

But, it saddens, that this statement of the expertise can be found and is spread on many web sites without further questioning that statement.

According to this expertise the dogs display climatic adaptive dysfunctions.

Phrasing in this expertise is strange:
It is not the climate, which displays adaptive dysfunctions, obviously it is meant, that the dogs display dysfunctions to adapt to different climatic situations or climatic changes.

Naked dogs exist in various continents and in various very different climatic zones, when one reads their history carefully. See part 1!

The naked cats originate from Canada-Ontario, America-Minnesota, Russia-Rostov-na-Donu and Russia-Saint Petersburg, which also have quite different climatic zones. See part 2!

When this expertise was made, has someone studied the distribution and the original habitat of these naked dog and cat breeds?
If these naked dogs would have had in fact problems to adapt to different climatic zones, why did they survive then for more than 3000 years until up to our days?

These are only some few thoughts and arguments, which already prove this statement of the expertise wrong.
As it is common in mathematics, a statement is only valid and true, as long as not another opposite fact can be shown.

Homozygous dogs inherit a semi-lethal defect that the kittens die perinatal.

Citation from the expertise, page 21:

"Für das Nacktgen homozygote Tiere sind nicht lebensfähig und sterben perinatal."

In English:
Animals homozygous for the gene for hairlessness cannot survive and die perinatal.

In the literature list for this statement, researches dated from 1934, 1970 and 1985 are cited. The youngest research is 14 years old, when compared to the date of issue of this expertise.

What does perinatal mean?

Definition as written in the dictionary of medicine in MedicineNet.com:
Perinatal: Pertaining to the period immediately before and after birth.
The word "perinatal" is a hybrid of the Greek "peri-" meaning "around or about" and "natal" from the Latin "natus" meaning "born."

That means, homozygous naked dogs die around their birth, i.e. shortly before they are born or shortly after they are born.

Or did they mean prenatal in this expertise?

If one reads the article of Robinson cited in this expertise, one may read the following:
The Journal of Heredity 76:217-218. 1985
Roy Robinson: Chinese crested dog
page 218

"The lethality of HrHr probably occurs prenatally since Chinese crested breeders do not seem to be troubled with extraordinary perinatal anomalies, still-births, or death of young pups."

Robinson writes that the lethal-factor is prenatal, but he does not call it perinatal.
When reading such a statement in the expertise, one may draw the conclusion, that living kittens are born, but those die shortly after their birth. This conclusion is implicitly included in the term 'cannot survive'.
That has something to do with scientific exactness in this expertise, that on purpose something is assumed - that kittens may die shortly after they are born due to some anomalies, which is not written and cannot be found in the cited literature.

Naked dogs display ectodermal dysplasias.

What does ectodermal mean? What is a dysplasia?

Ectodermal refers to the ectoderm = "the outer blastodermic layer of embryoblasts in vertebrates and humans. From this layer the central nervous system and the sensory organs will develop, and also the skin and its supplements".

An ectodermal dysplasia is an "inherited defect in development of all or one organ developed from the ectoderm; a defect and dysfunction in different grades, for example of the sweat glands or the sebaceous glands, of the skin, of the hairs (hypotrichosis), of the teeth, of the nose, of the eyes, of the outer ear; also a defect of the senses of smell and taste and defects of intelligence".

Definition from: Roche Lexicon of Medicine, 4th edition; © Published by Urban & Fischer, Munich 1984/1987/1993/1999. Online Lexicon.

Citation from the expertise, page 21:
"Nackthunde sind für das Nacktgen heterozygot. Sie zeigen regelmäßig schwerwiegende Gebissanomalien: meist fehlen die Prämolaren (Backenzähne), häufig auch Canini (Fangzähne) oder Incisive (Schneidezähne)."

In English:
Dogs are heterozygous for the gene for hairlessness. They display usually severe anomalies of the bite: mostly the premolars are missing, frequently canines and incisors are also missing.
To confirm the statement two researches are cited in the literature list, one dated from 1971, the other one dated from 1974.

But, however, there is a younger research study, which should have been also cited in this expertise:
Monreal AW, Ferguson BM, Headon DJ, Street SL, Overbeek PA, and Zonana J, 1999. Mutations in the human homologue of mouse dl cause autosomal recessive and dominant hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia.
Nature Genet 22:366–369.
That has something to do with scientific thoroughness.

But meanwhile the gene causing the sparse coat and anomalies in the bite of the Chinese Crested Dog could be identified and marked by DNA-analysis:

Journal of Heredity 2005:96(7):727–734
Genetic Mapping of Canine Multiple System Degeneration and Ectodermal Dysplasia Loci
Dennis P. O’Brien, Gary S. Johnson, Robert D. Schnabel, Shahnawaz Khan, Joan R. Coates, Gayle C. Johnson, and Jeremy F. Taylor
"Chinese Crested dogs with CED have marked abnormalities of their teeth and hair coat. Their nails, however, appear normal. In dogs, sweat glands occur only on the foot pads. To our knowledge, sweat glands have not been evaluated in dogs with CED.
The ‘‘hairless’’ crosses also have abnormal dentition.
CED controls the distribution of hair on the body but not the characteristics of the hair shaft."

In this study Chinese Crested Dogs and crossings with the Kerry Blue Terrier were investigated concerning severe defects in the brain causing severe motional disorders, which is called Canine Multiple System Degeneration (CMSD) and which was already detected in the Kerry Blue Terrier. A supplementary result of this study was the localization of the above mentioned gene CED.

Before you draw too fast any conclusion: CMDS has nothing to do and is not connected with the hairlessness. The intention of the study was, if there are also parallels in other dog breeds in the gene-locus for CMDS as detected for the Kerry Blue Terrier.

Each breed has genetic defects - Thus: All breeds must be forbidden.

Let us make some general remarks:

The faster the progress of science in dogs and cats is, especially concerning the DNA-analysis and the genome projects in dogs and cats, the more genetic defects will be found. And, none of the dog and cat breeds will be excluded.
It is the same progress as in humans, the more science is able to reveal the more severe defects will be found and the more genes will be identified.

And, exactly that is the point to which this expertise must be measured, that this expertise extracts some singular defects, classifies them somehow without making the classification scheme transparent, but draws quite fast some conclusions and suggests the most simplest solution, which does exist always, to forbid breeding and declares such a conclusion as the only one breeding rule.

It is always very simple to forbid something instead of giving a breeding program and giving breeding rules for each breed.

This expertise classifies the defects differently from one breed to the other, which is scientifically quite illogic.
There are not given any further reasons, why a defect leads to prohibition of breeding in one breed and why for the same defect testing is suggested in another breed.

The best example for this illogic and unscientific classification of defects is the deafness:

Deafness is mentioned in dogs somewhere in the chapter "Weitere monogen vererbte Einzeldefekte und Erkrankungen" (Further monogenic inherited single defects and diseases) in item g (page 24) amongst many other items, in cats the subject deafness comprises a full chapter consisting of several pages (pages 39-42).
Strange! Strange!

A defect, which leads to prohibition of breeding in cats, leads to the suggestion of an audiometric test in some dog breeds, where the Dalmatian is only mentioned amongst further breeds.
Strange! Strange!

The ferret, for example, which must have been known, when this expertise was made, and which existed already as domestic animal, does not comprise any chapter of the chapter called "Spezieller Teil" (Specific part).
Strange! Strange!

Article will be continued.