Miniture animals?

You know how there is miniture horses? Will there ever be miniture bears? or like miniture tigers? Lions? IS THIS POSSIBLE?

Miniture animals?
Yes, there are lots of miniature animals and you can always create more through selective breeding (it'll take about 5-10 generations)





There are many populations of natural miniature animals, like shetland ponies (that naturally evolved on the shetland islands) or the key deer, or even dwarve forests. This is a common phenomenon of large mammals on island populations and is a well noted phenomenon. Basicly, the just so story goes like this, on a island, it is more advantageous to be small than large because the food source is limited.
Reply:Horses have been bred by people for a long time, so when a coincidence of genes produced a miniature version of the type of horse they were breeding, someone just went "Huh! That's interesting!" and tried breeding that miniture horse with other horses to see if he could make more of the smaller horses. So that was humans activly trying to cultivate that phenotype.





But as far as I know, lions and tigers and bears (Oh my!) have never been bred by humans to the extent that horses have. Any offspring of those wild animals that may have happened to be miniature were not adapted to the wild environment where they lived and were probably killed. I wouldn't be surprised if a mother lion or tiger killed a cub of hers because it was born stunted and she didn't want it to survive and produce offspring that were also not suited for their environment.





So in theory, it would be possible, but most species of animals would kill or shun that smaller version and it would be very difficult for that mini-lion to find another lion willing to mate with it. Humans would have to interfere if they wanted to try and develop a breed of miniature bears or whatnot.
Reply:I suppose it could happen. Chihuahuas are miniaturized dogs, and Shetland ponies are miniaturized horses. If enough effort were put into selective breeding for bears or large cats, it's possible a miniature bear or lion could be bred.





It depends on the amount of genetic variation in available populations, and it would take many generations to accomplish.
Reply:Spelling: Miniature.





Answer: Yes. But if guided by evolution, it will take hundreds of thousands of years of pressure on the animals to select only for the smallest members of the species. If done by humans, it will probably still take hundreds (and do you really want to be the guy to tell a bear he can only mate with a particular female? I don't).
Reply:yeah its possible--if they get genetically modified
Reply:Hahaha Brian L made me lol.