During our hamster breeding project we mated a banded umbrous, teddy bear male hamster and an unbanded, golden, short hair female hamster. The cross is as follows:
| Baballee x babaLLEe | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Bale | bale | ||
| baLE | BabaLlEe | babaLlEe | |
| baLe | BabaLlee | babaLlee | |
On October 3, 2000, the P generation female was placed in the P generation male's cage, resulting in a successful mating session. The female was then removed from the male's cage and returned to her own cage. Soon, the female began to grow as she neared her due date (October 21). We fed her additional fruits and vegetables, providing valuable nutrients for the offspring. On the evening of October 21, 2000, the female gave birth to eleven, tiny pink hamsters. However, two appeared to be stillborn. One week later we realized that only five hamsters remained. The mother may have eaten them because she knew that she could not raise them all or she was frightened by something or someone.
The cross of the P generation resulted in the following F1 generation genotypes:
The phenotypes are as follow:
However, our actual results were:
The genes that produce unbanded offspring are dominant over those that produce banded offspring. Although most of the babies are unbanded, one is banded because the P generation female is heterozygous for the banded gene. Golden coloring is dominant over umbrous coloring which is simple recessive. As a result, the majority of the offspring were golden rather than umbrous. However, because the P generation female is heterozygous for the umbrous color, some of the offspring were umbrous. Short hair is dominant over long hair which is simple recessive as well. Because the P generation female is homozygous for short hair and the male is homozygous for long hair, all of the offspring were born with short hair.
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