For many endangered species, population decline to the brink of extinction leads to inbreeding, exposing a species to deleterious recessive mutations that severely limit its potential to recover. But ...

In 1871, a French settler by the name of Heurtin left Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean. He left behind five cattle on ...

A small group of woolly mammoths became trapped on Wrangel Island around 10,000 years ago when rising sea levels separated the island from mainland Siberia. Small, isolated populations of animals lead ...

In 1995, panthers from Texas were introduced to the Sunshine State in an attempt to preserve the Florida panther population from inbreeding leading toward extinction. A new study shows that inbreeding ...

"Of all the subspecies of reindeer found in the high north, the Svalbard reindeer has the most inbreeding and the lowest genetic diversity," says Nicolas Dussex, a postdoc at Norwegian University of ...

Some of the last mammoths on Earth suffered from mutated genes that reduced fertility, caused diabetes, affected their development and even kept them from being able to smell flowers, according to a ...

A recent UC Davis report found inbreeding in the dwindling populations of red foxes in California’s Sierra Nevada and Lassen regions. These red foxes are smaller than other fox species and are ...