[Dragaera] Boing!

[Jon Lincicum]

Philip Hart wrote:
> On Thu, 7 Sep 2006, Jon Lincicum wrote:
>
>   
>> Yes, but that was kind of my point. How much of a percentage is enough
>> to matter? And is that an arbitrary number, or does it have an objective
>> rationale behind it?
>>     
>
>
> I'm operating under the assumption that Dragaerans have a few native
> genes with little phenotypic effect beyond some personality tweaks.
> Plus maybe the e'Kieron gene with at least one large effect.
>
> I expect the minor racial variation (slanted eyes, bow legs) between
> the houses is due to sexual selection (based on fashion or accident
> or perhaps the above personality tweaks) or drift.
>   

Hold on...

Weren't Dragaeran's just human (Easterner) stock until the Jenoine got 
to meddling with them?

Now, I'm not a geneticist. I do know that some pretty big physical 
differences can result from a comparatively minor difference 
(percentage-wise) in genetic structure (humans are something like 97% 
similar to chimps, for example). But Dragaerans are half again as tall 
as a typical Easterner, have pronounced physical differences (pointy 
ears, noble's points, very thin, &c) and they live on the order of *45 
times as long*.

To me, this seems likely to be more than .1% genetic difference...

Now, we don't know exactly how much of each given animal got dumped into 
the original Dragaeran stock to achieve these differences... But it 
would seem to be some fairly significant amount. At least, it seems to 
have resulted in some fairly significant differences.

I'm just saying.

Majikjon