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On the use of muzzle prints in the diagnosis of monozygosity of cattle twins

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2009

G. Wiener
Affiliation:
Animal Breeding Research Organization, Edinburgh

Extract

1. Past work on muzzle patterns of individuals and of twins is reviewed.

2. A technique of obtaining muzzle prints by making plaster casts is described.

3. Using casts, muzzle patterns from one-egg and two-egg twin pairs were scored for similarity on a 1– 5 scale. Patterns of one-egg twins were significantly more similar than those of two-egg twins, and the largest part of the total variance was due to the difference between these two groups. The score distributions for monozygous and dizygous twins did not completely overlap, indicating that muzzle pattern is inherited. However, the extent of overlap observed confines the usefulness of muzzle pattern in twin diagnosis to confirmatory evidence at the extremes of the similarity scale.

4. Parts of the muzzle pattern (central groove, cell length, and cell margins) were judged on an arbitrary scale. Two-egg twins were not found sufficiently less similar than one-egg twins for the characters to be useful in diagnosis. Twins were more alike than random pairs, but significantly so only for central groove and MZ cell length.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1954

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