Why Half-Clan Relationships are Essential to Clan Survival
Why half-clan relationships are essential to clan survival
Okay, here comes a dumb, unprofessionally worded essay about the logistics of a children's book series. This is a topic I've been thinking about since re-reading the series again and realizing just how many cats in the clans are related to each other. So, basically, clans are groups of twenty to fourty or so cats, presumably. If a group this small lives within their own borders, on their own, only breeding with members of their own clan, after several generations this will inevitably lead to inbreeding and as such, physical deformities, infertility, and death.
This becomes evident by the Omen of the Stars arc. As shown in Youtuber Moonkitti's video "Bumblestripe", by the end of Omen of the Stars, almost every cat in ThunderClan is related to each other. This is portrayed by Bumblestripe explaining to Dovewing that he is like, almost literally her only choice for a mate, because she's related to almost everybody else. And the reason Bumblestripe is viable? His mother is Millie, a former outsider and at that point, one of the only points of genetic diversity in the clan, other than Daisy. But even Daisy mated with Spiderleg, who is still related to Dovewing.
As such, traditional clan life is much like the old royal families of Europe, where "keeping the bloodline pure" was the norm, but resulted in many, many defects. A pure-blooded Clan cat is likely to be at a genetic disadvantage in comparison to a cat who is half-clan. They will likely live a shorter life, be more prone to illness and infertility, etc. If a given clan completely followed the warrior code and nobody ever took a mate outside their Clan, that clan would die off within a handful of generations due to inbreeding. A group as small as a Clan simply cannot survive that way.
In conclusion, if cats didn't break the code and fall in love illegally, the clans would all die off. Half-clan relationships and taking in outsiders is essential to clan survival, to keep the gene pool diverse enough to avoid birth defects.
For more information regarding better-worded scientific analyses of this phenomenon, read some articles about the wolves of Isle Royale, a pack of wolves that were secluded from the mainland and ended up inbreeding themselves almost to extinction until new specimens were introduced.
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