Labrador retrievers have a tendency to get fat. Studies indicate 50 percent to 60 percent of labs are classified as overweight or obese. Overeating is possibly in Labs’ genes according to a newly published study.
Source: Washington Post, May 3, 2016.
What we’ve found in the study is that there really is a hard-wired reason for some Labradors to be completely obsessed by food,” said Eleanor Raffan, a veterinary surgeon and geneticist at the University of Cambridge, when interviewed about the study published in the journal Cell Metabolism. “The reason these dogs become overweight is largely because of the amount they eat,” and not because their metabolism is different, Raffan said. “It just means that they are so much more obsessed by food. If you own one of these dogs, you are up against it if you try to keep them slim. But you can keep them slim if you pay attention.”
Also see: Gizmodo, May 3, 2016.
Raffan’s team also looked at a larger sample of 310 Labradors, and they noticed a significant number of canine behaviors associated with the impaired POMC gene. Not all Labradors with the DNA variation were fat, but the mutation was definitely associated with higher weight.