Why corgi mixes look like adorable munchkin versions of other dogs

This doggo is actually a Swedish Vallhund, which is probably a precursor to the Welsh Corgi. But come on—that looks like a stumpy husky or something, doesn't it? He (or she) was too cute not to include.

These good boys and girls are all corgi cross breeds, and people have pointed out that they all seem to look like you took a normally proportioned dog and just chopped off half of each leg. And they’re not wrong.

Scientifically speaking, they’re almost spot on. The reason corgis have those sweet lil’ legs is that they all suffer (albeit adorably) from the same genetic condition: achondroplastic dwarfism.

The first short-legged puppers happened by accident some 300 plus years ago. When people were starting to breed dogs for specific traits, they found some happened to have these miniature little legs with normally proportioned bodies. And those dog breeders who thought that was freakin’ adorable decided to start breeding those vertically-challenged pups with other dogs in an effort to pass along the condition.

Back then, probably around 50 percent of the litter would end up with shorter legs. That’s because dwarf dogs have a dominant gene that makes them so stumpy: it's an autosomal dominant gene, which means it’s a gene present on one of the non-sex chromosomes—and you only need one copy of the gene to have dwarfism.

Read More at:
https://www.popsci.com/corgi-mixes#page-11

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