The small size and isolation of the endangered population of Southern Resident killer whales in the Pacific Northwest have led to high levels of inbreeding. This inbreeding has contributed to their ...

Researchers have discovered a large suite of genes in the petunia plant that acts to prevent it from breeding with itself or with its close relatives, and to promote breeding with unrelated ...

Two days ago, the last male northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) died. His passing leaves two surviving members of his subspecies: both females who are unable to bear calves. Even though ...

"Fifty years from now, will there be Masai giraffes? I don't know. I think it's a 50/50 proposition," Douglas Cavener, who has published a new study on the risks facing the species, told Live Science.

Three mountain-lion cubs born recently in Southern California have been identified as inbred, adding to a growing list of inbreeding cases amongst these animals as a result of habitat fragmentation in ...

Inbreeding may have been a common practice among early human ancestors, fossils show. The evidence comes from fragments of an approximately 100,000-year-old human skull unearthed at a site called ...

PHILADELPHIA — Bedbugs that infest a room and spread within a building are often one big extended family, the offspring of a single female that begot sons and daughters that then interbred with ...

The hole in the top of this 100,000-year-old skull from China, researchers say, reflects genetic mutations that result from inbreeding. Image via PLOS ONE/Wu et. al. In 2010, the surprising discovery ...

Gorilla genome The most extensive genetic analysis of mountain gorillas ever conducted has found the critically endangered apes burdened with severe inbreeding and at risk of extinction. But there are ...

Dec. 2 (UPI) --New research suggests prodigious amounts of inbreeding best explains the protruding lower jaw that characterized many of the Spanish and Austrian kings and their wives that made up the ...

Mountain gorillas’ DNA reveals a long decline in numbers that has led to massive inbreeding. An international group of researchers examined the genomes of seven mountain gorillas and six eastern ...

Inbreeding and small population groups could have led to the extinction of Neanderthals - not just the arrival of modern humans - research suggests. Neanderthals disappeared around 40,000 years ago, ...