How did breeders create the English Budgie without any technology at the time?

[bridgetchicken]

Can somebody please explain to me how bird breeders a hundred years ago managed to create the English Budgie without any technology at the time?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

What do you mean? You don't need technology to selectively breed animals with specific traits

 

[bridgetchicken]

What do you mean? You don't need technology to selectively breed animals with specific traits

I mean, in the wild there are no English Budgies. Just regular green parakeets. So how did breeders a hundred years ago managed to turn small green parakeets into large English Budgies?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I mean, in the wild there are no English Budgies. Just regular green parakeets. So how did breeders a hundred years ago managed to turn small green parakeets into large English Budgies?

They selectively bred for them. Same way pretty much any breed is made.

 

[NatJ]

I mean, in the wild there are no English Budgies. Just regular green parakeets. So how did breeders a hundred years ago managed to turn small green parakeets into large English Budgies?

Select the biggest ones available, breed them together, select the biggest of the offspring to be your new breeders.... Over enough years, the average size increases.

For color, keep and breed any that show unusual color. New mutations appear every now and then, and are also present in some wild population, so it's just a matter of keeping all the available ones and playing with what they do when they are bred with each other.

There was a fair bit of discussion on this subject about a year ago, that you might find interesting:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...eate-the-different-colored-parakeets.1488635/

 

[bridgetchicken]

Select the biggest ones available, breed them together, select the biggest of the offspring to be your new breeders.... Over enough years, the average size increases.

For color, keep and breed any that show unusual color. New mutations appear every now and then, and are also present in some wild population, so it's just a matter of keeping all the available ones and playing with what they do when they are bred with each other.

There was a fair bit of discussion on this subject about a year ago, that you might find interesting:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...eate-the-different-colored-parakeets.1488635/

Does selective breeding only work for animals? What about humans? Will two large people produce large children? Will two tall people produce tall children?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Does selective breeding only work for animals? What about humans? Will two large people produce large children? Will two tall people produce tall children?

Yes. But there are other factors than just tall+tall= tall

 

[bridgetchicken]

Yes. But there are other factors than just tall+tall= tall

Thanks for clearing this up for me. I forgot all about high school biology.

 

[NatJ]

Does selective breeding only work for animals? What about humans? Will two large people produce large children? Will two tall people produce tall children?

It does work for people too. Children from two tall parents are more likely to be tall while children from two short parents are more likely to be short.

But with people, they typically get to choose their own partners, so you don't see the results of many generations being artificially selected (by someone else) for a specific trait.

There are some traits that are more common in some parts of the world than others (things like disease resistance, in addition to visible traits like skin color and hair color.) Sometimes this is because people with one trait were more likely to live or die, other times it is because of the way people settled new areas-- a small group of related people (sharing certain traits) would move to a new place, and their descendents would be somewhat isolated for a while before any more groups moved into the same area (I mean way back in the past, when there were many areas that did not yet have people, and travel was difficult.)