In 1959, Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev began an experiment into the effects of domestication. He started with a population of silver foxes and bred them for only one trait: tamability. The results were truly fascinating; 40 years later, 70-80% of the foxes were more than just docile, exhibiting friendliness towards humans. Even more interesting, however, were the physical changes that arose in concert with domestication. From the article (which is fascinating to read in it’s entirety):
Forty years into our unique lifelong experiment,we believe that Dmitry Belyaev would be pleased with its progress. By intense selective breeding, we have compressed into a few decades an ancient process that originally unfolded over thousands of years. Before our eyes,“the Beast” has turned into “Beauty,” as the aggressive behavior of our herd’s wild progenitors entirely disappeared. We have watched new morphological traits emerge, a process previously known only from archaeological evidence. Now we know that these changes can burst into a population early in domestication,triggered by the stresses of captivity, and that many of them result from changes in the timing of developmental processes. In some cases the changes in timing, such as earlier sexual maturity or retarded growth of somatic characters,resemble pedomorphosis.
There are also videos of the foxes here and here. Finally, a slightly more up-to-date article (though still three years old) from the New York Times.
Tags: domestication, Evolution, fox, selection
I wish we could domesticise (is that a verb?) foxes now instead of dogs, it’d be so much more interesting.