upatsix.com - Your Source For Pet Bird Information

It is very sad that the gene pools of many captive parrots has been polluted by the breeding of mutants. The gene pools of some captive species have become gene cesspools.

The only cockatoo so far to become a victim of this is the cockatiel. It seems to me very bad to propagate huge numbers of genetically sick birds because it is a money making proposition. The lutino cockatiels are much less viable than the normal birds. They seem to have very poor vision as well. Cockatiels may soon fall victim to the type of problems that now beset budgerigars. Humans have selected bizarre budgerigar mutants so long that they also have selected for genetic instability. Around 20% of the captive budgerigars develop tumours per year. I believe the captive population now has the highest known rate of tumour development!

It is practically impossible to find normal black masked lovebirds. The mutant craze has resulted in virtually only the ugly blue mutants with virtually none of the normal ones left.

Outside of parrots the Gouldian finch population is being replaced with ugly mutants without all the colours of the beautiful natural birds. I heard someone say, "wouldn't it be wonderful if someone could produce a White Gouldian!" It would NOT be wonderful. It is destroying the captive population's viability. The species is threatened in the wild, so it may be endangering the very survival of the species in this case.

Let's not get the mutant craze going into any more birds! Let's keep the other cockatoos free from this disgusting fad!

If your talking about mutations, well there are pied, cinnamon, dilute, albino, blue and lutino galahs... and there's even a lutino sulphur crested too... and a pied black cockatoo.











And just because a bird is a mutation does not make them "genetically sick". There are many healthy mutations out there... sure, there are bad ones too, which can usually be related to inbreeding or poor breeding or maybe just a mix of bad genes... for example, the feather duster budgie, which isn't expected to live past the age of 6 months, max a year old. I can definitely see why those birds should not reproduce, and for their parents to be split up or retired.

For lutino tiels specifically, I don't believe that they have poor vision... only very sensitive eyes, due to the albinism effect... sure, they may not be able to see as well as other mutations, but that's not to say that they DON'T have good vision. Therefore, they may be sensitive to bright/normal lights and may do better in a dim environment. Although, that's IMO.

And of course, not everyone thinks mutations are ugly. But, for your information, a mutation can lead to a new species in the wild... which is, in a sense, how species and subspecies are created.... I'm not talking about a total change of color, but a gradual change of size and color... as can be seen in the various types of sulphur crested toos, the various types of black cockatoos, and especially seen in the "Christmas" Conures... We have mitreds, cherry heads, white eyes, cubans, finsch's, waglers, hispaniolans.... some of which have subspecies. They are all different species yet they all have some of the basic coloring... red on the head (in varying amounts, from none to the entire head), a green body, yellow/olive coloring (usually) under the wings and tail feathers, and the possibility of red also on the wing bends and thighs.

The reality is that almost all mutants are harmful. Most of mutations are simply errors in genetic coding that result in having an organism unable to make a certain protein.

Lutino mutation, for example, results from birds being unable to make melanin. Unfortunately this mutation also has serious side effects on vision in birds, as it does in humans. Other mutations may seem less harmful than this, but the reality is that almost all mutants would NOT be able to survive in the wild. When we compound genetic mistakes by putting together genes from various mutants we end up with what can almost always only be called sick birds.

Look at the hideous things the mutant craze still has done to budgerigars.

Organisms are well "tuned" with genes to make them survive very well. When we deliberately load them up with defective genes their health is diminshed dramatically.

Furthermore, most of the mutants are maintained by serious inbreeding. This dramatically reduces the total gene pool of a captive species. This has the unfortunate side effect of dramatically increasing other genetic problems.

A good example of this is baldness in cockatiels. In the rush to get huge numbers of lutino cockatiels birds with another defect, baldness, were bred again and again so that there are still lots of bald cockatiels from this!

I am sorry, but it is very plain to anyone with the slightest scientific understanding that propagating huge numbers of mutants is a terribly irresponsible thing for us to do!

Lutino mutation, for example, results from birds being unable to make melanin. Unfortunately this mutation also has serious side effects on vision in birds, as it does in humans.
I can see your point but at the same time if it was so harmful there wouldn't be so many lutinos.

Other mutations may seem less harmful than this, but the reality is that almost all mutants would NOT be able to survive in the wild.
In a sense, you are right... yet there are plenty of mutation city pigeons/rock doves living in cities and in less rural areas. The pied yellow tailed black cockatoo is a wild bird, quite clearly an adult, as well. The blue mutation yellow naped amazon first appeared in the wild.

When we compound genetic mistakes by putting together genes from various mutants we end up with what can almost always only be called sick birds.
To me, a sick bird is one that cannot survive or needs constant treatment in order to be healed. Therefore, I cannot see how most mutations are harmful to a bird.

Organisms are well "tuned" with genes to make them survive very well. When we deliberately load them up with defective genes their health is diminshed dramatically.
And yet, there are plenty of mutations in finches, canaries, budgies, cockatiels, lovebirds, ringnecks, green cheeks.... and the list goes on... and a lot of these birds are very healthy as well, living good lives. In the wild they might not be able to survive as they would be easier to spot, but we aren't speaking of wild birds.

Furthermore, most of the mutants are maintained by serious inbreeding. This dramatically reduces the total gene pool of a captive species. This has the unfortunate side effect of dramatically increasing other genetic problems.
If you linebreed irresponsibly, yes. If you are careful and selective, no.

A good example of this is baldness in cockatiels. In the rush to get huge numbers of lutino cockatiels birds with another defect, baldness, were bred again and again so that there are still lots of bald cockatiels from this!
In captive bred birds, is baldness really an issue? What harm can it do to the bird? I see your point here, but many people are actually breeding cockatiels to try and remove that bald spot... therefore there are lutinos out there that do not have the bald spot.


I can understand that with bad breeding, the genes of a mutation could be made weaker.... but with good breeding they could be kept strong. I'm not against mutations, but I am against breeding hybrids... yet, we do have wild hybrids, such as the Adelaide Rosella, which is a naturally occuring hybrid between the Crimson Rosella, and the Yellow Rosella. The Adelaide Rosella, even though it's a hybrid, is doing quite well in the wild and thriving.

Economics can still be a positive driving force, so quality is (hopefully) the end result, and this must be reinforced. We have seen that the initial "must have it" phase doesn't last long, regarding livestock, as very few people can afford the luxury of maintaining a load of inferior products.
Organized breeders should promote these qualities:
1. Health: this might include size, conformation, and longevity.
2. Temperament: we are not raising animals that will be reintroduced back into their wild habitat. In parrots, too often, birds that are not suitable as pets become breeders, but mellow parents have the greater chance of producing mellow offspring.
3. Esthetics. Actually, color mutations are easy to work with. The problems come with overproduction of inferior stock. Again, this is not the fault of the specific mutation.

Although many mutants like albinism are highly damaging to bird's health, the very worst thing that happens as a result of the mutant craze is dramatically reducing the genetic pool of the captive species involved.

The only way to get a recessive mutation in a large population is through massive imbreeding, mostly breeding siblings and parent birds. This quickly completely destroys the genetic diversity of a population of birds. It not only destroys the genetic diversity of the mutants, but the people who breed the mutants then also sell the heterozygous ones that do not exhibit the mutant characteristics. Soon practically the entire population is left with nothing but mutants. Perhaps the worst example is budgerigars, with black masked lovebirds just behind.

This is an absolutely evil thing to do with birds that are at all rare. In these species there is already a small gene pool, and reducing it further almost guarantees extinction of the species.

If people MUST have mutants at least great care should be taken to protect the rest of the population of the species involved from pollution of the general gene pool. This has never been done in the past.

Mutations are errors in DNA replication. A genetic error that would turn a normal umbrella cockatoo bright chartreuse would almost certainly have other genetic errors occuring along with the chartreuse gene! VERY few mutations are beneficial to the organism.

A mutation does not alter the species... i.e. you can't turn a cockatoo into a cockatiel, just by a change of it's colors. Therefore, you cannot make a species extinct simply by the entire species becoming another color.... although I can understand the issue of not wanting to breed mutations thus trying to find PURE NORMALS that do not carry any mutations whatsoever.... however, all mutations came from normals... therefore even if you bred purely normals that did not have any mutations (dominant or recessive) it will still be likely that sooner or later a mutation WILL occur. Sure, most mutations do not survive in the wild because they tend to be easier prey or they may be shunned by their parents or others of their species thus less likely to survive and reproduce... and since we don't have those issues in captivity, mutations can easily thrive.

Birds evolve naturally by mutating. They will mutate out the genes they do not need in favor of better genes... or they will mutate new genes to replace others.... or species with "bad" genes will just die off. It's how we get species. Sure, a complete change in color wont necessarily benefit the species but look at the polar bear... it used to be a black species of bear. Now there are NO black polar bears as they all became WHITE. White polar bears were able to survive better than black ones, therefore a total change in color benefitted the species.


As for a cockatoo becoming purely yellow... they could only do that if they produced psittacin (what controls yellows and oranges in parrots feathering). If they do not produce psittacin then it's unlikely they could become completely yellow... but then you can easily look at sun conures and see that many range in colors from yellow with green on their flights and tail feathers to a red orange with green on flights and tail feathers... these birds have probably been selectively bred to have more yellow or more orange than normal. However, that doesn't make them any less a sun conure.

You do not seem to understand what people are doing to make large numbers of mutants available. They breed closely related birds to one another, so that only the genes from a few birds are left in the genetic pool for this species. This means that genetic diversity is lost.

There is also the serious issue that many mutations that may make a bird have different colour pattern has had other serious genetic damage, and multiplying this gene by imbreeding birds not only multiplies the colour pattern, it multiplies the other genetic damage.

Even when mutations that are not harmful to bird's health are propagated the practice of imbreeding to fix the trait removes genetic variation from the gene pool.

The problem with captive birds is that there are not great numbers of them in the first place, so the captive gene pool is already small.

There are VERY few mutations that are positive, as I said before, most are simply the result of DNA transcription errors that result in individuals lacking the ability to make some enzyme.

If mutant genes were kept out of the general population of a species, and if the species were abundant there is no problem. Otherwise, there certainly is!!!

I forgot to mention an interesting experiment that we did in an University course that I was teaching concerning mutants.

The class put several mutant fish into a test pond. All were the black phase of the fish popularly known as "mollies". After a few months we noted the presence of a few normal coloured fish. Within just a few weeks there were none of the mutant colour fish left at all!

Then at my home we set up a very large cage and put in a dozen budgerigars. This was not supposed to be an experiment, but it ended up showing the same principle as the class experiment described above. Two were the normal green ones, two were the blue mutation, which is known to be fairly harmless. The other eight were lutinos, albinos, etc. We acquired all of these at a local pet store. Amazingly after three years only the normal green and the blue ones were still alive. Most of the others had died from malignant tumours.

It is critical that the genetic pool of captive species be kept diverse. The survival of species in part depends on having a genetically diverse population.

You do not seem to understand what people are doing to make large numbers of mutants available. They breed closely related birds to one another, so that only the genes from a few birds are left in the genetic pool for this species. This means that genetic diversity is lost.
I understand that... when you inbreed irresponsibly, you end up with bad genes in the birds... but if you do it RIGHT, you wont have this issue.

There is also the serious issue that many mutations that may make a bird have different colour pattern has had other serious genetic damage, and multiplying this gene by imbreeding birds not only multiplies the colour pattern, it multiplies the other genetic damage.
For a good example, the feather duster mutation in budgies... they aren't expected to live more than 6-12 months at max. I have heard that people ARE trying to strengthen the gene, but IMO it's one that should be stayed clear away from.

The problem with captive birds is that there are not great numbers of them in the first place, so the captive gene pool is already small.
I'm not too sure about this... considering the fact of how many captive budgies, lovebirds, cockatiels, etc that there are... but when you are talking about the larger species that are less common in the wild, or ones that are just less common in captivity I can understand that point.

If mutant genes were kept out of the general population of a species, and if the species were abundant there is no problem. Otherwise, there certainly is!!!
Still, even though some mutations CAN cause problems in birds (as it can in any species) I still don't see an issue with mutations so long as they have healthy/strong genes.


The class put several mutant fish into a test pond. All were the black phase of the fish popularly known as "mollies". After a few months we noted the presence of a few normal coloured fish. Within just a few weeks there were none of the mutant colour fish left at all!
I don't really know anything about fish, but so long as they have the genes for the normal color, it's possible....

Then at my home we set up a very large cage and put in a dozen budgerigars. This was not supposed to be an experiment, but it ended up showing the same principle as the class experiment described above. Two were the normal green ones, two were the blue mutation, which is known to be fairly harmless. The other eight were lutinos, albinos, etc. We acquired all of these at a local pet store. Amazingly after three years only the normal green and the blue ones were still alive. Most of the others had died from malignant tumours.
First thing to stick out at me is the petstore... many inferior animals can be bought at a petstore... I've read before that some breeders of english/show/exhibition budgies will sell their inferior stock to petstores for the pet trade because these birds are not big enough or they don't show the colorings that they are looking for for their show birds...

Another thing, is that many of the animals from the petstores may come from breeding mills where they don't feed the animals the healthiest diet, they may overbreed their animals to get the biggest profit, and they may not take care to ensure that they have healthy animals worth breeding... point is, we don't know what situation the birds are coming from. Therefore, you are buying birds that may be more prone to problems than others who were selectively bred right to have the least occuring problems.

There-in lies the problem of trying to find genetically strong birds who are less likely to have problems such as cancers... because how can you tell a bird is genetically strong without knowing it's history or it's parents history?

Any viable species has evolved into a genetic state that works. There are many more ways of being dead than being alive. A mutation of a coding sequence of genome (as opposed to the non-coding, neutral DNA that has no phenotypic expression) is vastly more likely to be detrimental than helpful. Since genes may be expressed in more than one fashion, and since externally visible phenotypic effects are only a subset of the total changes wrought by any specific mutation, odds are disturbingly high that even apparently harmful mutations may have detrimental effects.

More significantly, though, mutation at a specific locus is extremely improbable. A specific mutation at a specific locus is more improbable still. You may get a bird with an attractive mutation, but you probably won't get more than one. This means, unfortunately, that all the carriers of the mutated version of the gene will necessarily be descendants of the original mutant. If you want to preserve the mutation, you'll have to breed the bird.

For the discussion below, I will make the assumption (reasonable, I believe) that the phenotypic effect that we're interested in is triggered by a change at a single genetic locus.

If the mutation is dominant, it's not so bad -- you can breed the bird with any other birds (of its species) and select all the heterozygous offspring and homozygous "mutants". Of course, you will then have to accept that 25% to 50% of the offspring will be "useless", and if temptation of greater assurance overwhelms you, you'll have to breed close kin. If, on the other hand, the mutation is recessive, you will get your desired result only by breeding birds with the new mutation with other birds having the same mutation (in order to be assured of the proper homozygous genes) or closely related birds which may be heterozygous in your locus of interest (in order to have even a chance). Two heterozygous carriers will only produce 25% "attractive" offspring. A homozygous "mutant" with a heterozygous carrier, 50%.

This is very different from what happens in nature, where an individual with a new mutation will breed "indiscriminately" with other individuals of its species, lacking it. If the mutation is helpful, it will spread slowly over the generations as individuals lacking it will tend to die at a higher rate. If it is harmful, it may never be passed on, or it will never spread because its carriers will tend to die at higher rates. In either case, changes will usually take dozens or hundreds of generations to become truly widespread, and natural selection will assure that a mutation with one positive phenotypic effect will not spread if its other phenotypic effects are detrimental to a degree that outweighs the benefit.

Keep in mind that biologists consider populations of, say, the ancestral cheetahs, which may have shrunk to a few thousand individuals, to be genetic bottlenecks so narrow as to threaten the long-term viability of the species. Breeders who seek to maintain a specific mutation, in pets bred in such relatively small numbers as (any given species of) exotic birds, will probably have effective founding populations numbering in the dozens, or less -- what are the odds that we're even talking about hundreds? And what are the chances that breeders account for (or are able to account for) all the genetic afflictions that may harm the species in the long run, given the short generation times, and all the obscuring factors in the forms of other causes of premature death that we see in pet birds?

Edit: I suppose the super-short summary is "People don't breed new mutations with a healthy genetic diversity, because it is impossible without gene therapy [that inserts the mutation into the genomes of unrelated birds]". Consider all the medical difficulties of pure-bred dogs.

As a Ph.D. in a related field, I detect a great degree of ignorance about genetics expressed by the person so strongly advocating destroying genetic diversity in the captive bird population!

I suggest the person should read a bit on genetics and just what is involved in most mutations. Most are the result of simple errors that inactivate certain enzymes. In almost all cases if the result had been positive that is the way the organisms would be in nature.

Of course there ARE exceptions. The chances that one that makes an organism an abnormal colour is beneficial is near dull.

Please enrol in a genetics course at your local University.

How many health problems in dogs and cats stem from careless breeding practices? The gene pool of many captive species of birds is very low in the first place, without deliberately reducing it by the imbreeding that accompanies production of mutants for mass sale.

The person is in a word, in need of education.