World's Strongest Dog

Well, are you able to guess what type of dog Wendy is? If you’re thinking she comes from an extremely massive, and muscular breed of dog, for example the Pit Bull (see picture below), you might be pretty close.

Pit Bull

The similarities between Wendy and the Pit Bull above are pretty close. Although I would have to say that Wendy has packed on a lot more muscle than the Pit Bull. In fact she shouldn’t actually be that muscular, Wendy is in all rights a Whippet. If you know what they look like, you will probably be pretty amazed, if not look at a normal Whippet and compare the two.

Whippet

This playful and lanky example of a Whippet shows that they are anything but hulking powerhouses so now comes the question why is she so big. Or, as some of you may be thinking, what did they do to her. The answer is nothing, Wendy suffers from a myostatin gene defect.

The defect has actually been breed into certain species of animals, look at the Belgian Blue for example.

The Belgian Blue has a natural mutation of the gene that codes for myostatin, a protein that counteracts muscle growth. The truncated myostatin is unable to function in this capacity, resulting in accelerated lean muscle growth, due primarily to hyperplasia rather than hypertrophy. The defect in the breed’s myostatin gene is maintained through linebreeding.

Belgian Blue

And if you’re thinking it would be cool to turn your myostatin gene off, well you might just get your chance. Scientists have already started to study this gene, and the possibility that this will become a form of gene doping in the future isn’t unlikely. But be warned, at the current stage, turning off the myostatin gene in mice produces buff mice with brittle ligaments that easily break. The muscles produced from the experiments are also quickly damaged, making the actual usefulness questionable.