18 ms·

> something is deeply different in dog genes, or in how and when those genes become active, and scientists are trying to determine exactly what it is Darwin fa

by bambax 9y ago

> something is deeply different in dog genes, or in how and when those genes become active, and scientists are trying to determine exactly what it is Darwin famously observed in the first chapter of On the Origin of Species that not one of our domestic animals can be named which has not in some country drooping ears. Darwin himself attributed it to "muscle misuse", the rationale being that domestic animals are not frequently enough on high alert, but genetic causes are more likely. The bizarre (and still running) experiment of Dmitry Belyaev who has been raising wild silver foxes for over 60 years to turn them into a domestic species by selecting the friendliest individuals at each generation seems to show that domestic characteristics, including droopy ears, appear "naturally" during this process, hinting at a genetic cause. Which genes is a tough question, but there are several programs looking for them.

sethammons 9y ago
My first thought was, for sure, the foxes you mentioned. But on the note of no domestic animals avoid some examples of drooping ears, while I'm sure you could find supporting cases, that does not seem to be the norm for horses nor cats. And opposite that, elephants seem to have drooping ears. While the claim might be valid, it feels weak.
- goofingaround 9y ago
  One factor that affects the horse is that humans use ear position to assess a horse's mental state. Most trainers teach riders to pay attention to whether a horse's ears are forward, pinned back, etc. Humans therefore may actively select horses with upright ears.
  - k__ 9y ago
    Also, they aren't predators
kharms 9y ago
http://www.radiolab.org/story/91696-new-nice/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/91696-new-nice/ This episode of radiolab goes into some theories about the process of fox domestication and hypothesizes that something similar might have occurred in humans. I don't remember it in enough detail to summarize, but it's a fascinating listen.
learnstats2 9y ago
It seems more likely to me that this has a human psychological cause, not a genetic cause. I suggest that - if humans associate e.g. droopy ears with being more friendly, this creates a positive feedback loop whereby those animals with droopy ears receive more positive interactions, show less fear and are modestly more likely to be selected by Belyaev's research for breeding, all other things being equal. Human bias has become a "selection pressure". This has no implication within genetics, neither genetics of the foxes nor genetics of the humans: it could simply be (increasingly) customary in society including Belyaev's. So, I strongly doubt any genetic cause.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  That is an interesting reversal of the causality, though if selection is involved, there would be a genetic change in either case, so sorting out the cause could be difficult. Do people see droopy ears as more friendly? I guess it indicates that the animal is not particularly alert, and so unlikely to be on the verge of aggression.
  - learnstats2 9y ago
    Perhaps people today think droopy ears are more friendly just because (for example) the first domesticated animals happened by chance to have droopy ears.
- travmatt 9y ago
  IIRC there’s an ongoing breeding program a Russian researcher is conducting with foxes - explicitly breeding the friendliest individuals. In addition to the ears drooping, others morphological differences manifested - the friendliest animals had distinct coat patterns, curlier tails, and then later generations additionally showed shortened legs, tail, snout, upper jaw, and widened skull.
- arkades 9y ago
  They're also dealing with a genetic bottleneck. As they repeatedly select for a given trait, they can inadvertently select for traits that are correlated /in their original sample population/, which may not be correlated universally. That is, with a small enough sample, if it just so happened the nicest cubs had (some traits) in common, you can easily end up exaggerating those traits in later generations. The Russian study is heavily inbred. They only ever had a maximum of 2000 foxes - now bred for a few dozen generations.
smnrchrds 9y ago
How do horses fit into this?
- glibgil 9y ago
  They edit: ~~aren't~~ are barely domesticated. They are useful already in their wild form. They can be "broken" to recognize a dominate rider as their herd leader, but they have to always be tied or corralled. People are trained on how to approach horses, not vice-versa. Never approach a horse from behind.
  - ryanx435 9y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse They are domesticated.
    - glibgil 9y ago
      Yes, but I mean to a far lesser degree than a dog. You get utility very quickly with a horse for very little trait selection. For example, you can get this far (no traits selected, completely wild, not feral) with a never-domesticated Przewalski's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovUGagVGiZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovUGagVGiZ4
  - callmeaz 9y ago
    Domesticating seems like a fuzzy concept here, in the way it's being discussed. For, as dog owners, we too (well, the more.. principled ones) are trained in how to approach a pup -- or a 'misbehaving' adult dog -- and how to train/discipline the dog in turn. As someone who has owned a pregnant mare, and observed (and been involved where appropriate) in the birthing, raising, and, with time, subsequent breaking of the foal, I think horses may be born in a more 'wild' form--- but only in the loose, as-it-were sense of the word. This all said, domestication should probably be discussed in a way that's wholly specific to a species since, with the horse-dog comparison, it goes without saying that their cognitive development, experience, functional relation to humans, and genetics (unlike the wolf/dog in this regard, a premise of the article) differ in such profound ways.
Smaug123 9y ago
Have you heard of Williams Syndrome? http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/10/11/somewhat-against-psychiatric-conditions-as-domestication-failure/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/10/11/somewhat-against-psychi...
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
  This is discussed at some length in the article, which draws parallels to domestic dog behavior and Williams syndrome.
Animats 9y ago
Not one of our domestic animals can be named which has not in some country drooping ears. Neither cats nor horses have drooping ears, except for ones that have serious birth defects or mutations.
- derefr 9y ago
  We've never prized docility in horses the way we do in other "pets"; in most cases, we've either bred them to be easily-spooked speed monsters (race horses; courier horses), or angry muscular bulls (war horses.) And there has never really been any kind of long-term eugenics project for cats; they mostly domesticated themselves, which had different results. There are no "work cats" that we've selectively bred with other "work cats" to improve their demeanour; there are purebred cats, but they're basically assholes and we basically don't care. (Why this is, I'll never know.)
  - Animats 9y ago
    Docility is much prized in horses. I've owned ex-racehorses, a Percheron war horse, an ex-police horse, and a big quiet warmblood. They're all "docile"; they'll accept training and won't bite or attack without serious provocation. Horses have been bred to be larger and more docile. The natural size for horses is a large pony. It's unclear how this started. Przewalski's horse, the last remaining feral horse breed, is not the genetic ancestor of the modern horse, but a diverging line. (Horses are somewhat different in the Americas than in Europe and Asia. They're not native. Feral horses in the Americas are descended from ones brought over from Europe by early Spanish conquerers. Amusingly, the pedigrees are known; the Spanish expeditions were Government operations and there's surviving paperwork. Most were good Andalusians.)
    - derefr 9y ago
      > They're all "docile"; they'll accept training and won't bite or attack without serious provocation. I guess I'm using "docility" a bit differently. There are two somewhat different commonly-used meanings, and it'd be helpful if they were different words: • the animals everyone tends to commonly use the word "domesticated" for, which usually have specifically eusocial behaviours, like coming and laying down beside a human. Dogs are the central example; but numerous animals, from ferrets to hamsters to pigeons, are actually like this. • the animals that aren't afraid of humans, and will tolerate their presence, and maybe learn skills from them. Horses, cows, sheep, chickens, etc. Farmers and breeders call these species "domesticated" (compared to their wild cousins), but they're not called that by lay-people. "Able to be livestock" might be what the average person would call these. (Oddly, some common "pets", like guinea pigs, are actually more in this category.) One of the major differences, in my mind, is that the animals everyone calls domesticated, like being around humans enough that—if raised in a human environment—they'll often defend their human "family member" against their own kind. But this is not a behaviour you see with the technically-domesticated species; a wolf, or a fox, or a cow, might defend its territory if it's feeling territorial, but it won't specifically defend you, even if you raised it. It knows humans are a sometimes-helpful thing, but its instincts haven't been hacked enough to consider them "kin." I'm not actually sure where horses fall on this measure, having not had much personal experience with them. Your input? --- Also, fitting into neither category, there are a few extremely-intelligent species that, by this measure, we might call "domesticated" without having had much human-mediated human interaction at all. Corvids and chimpanzees both understand human social behaviour well enough to "befriend" individual humans, but this doesn't translate to them having a default-positive association with humans in general. Also, under this distinction, I'd say that most wild animals that have assumed a "city habitat" like raccoons, skunks, squirrels, increasingly foxes in Britain, etc. are "technically domesticated." They're pretty much as docile if raised as pets as a horse or a cow would be. Definitely less unpredictable than a "pet" monkey. These species are doing the same thing cats did to get where they are; they just haven't spent as many generations evolving under the constraints cats have yet.
tzs 9y ago
> The bizarre (and still running) experiment of Dmitry Belyaev who has been raising wild silver foxes [...] What do you find bizarre about it?

by bambax 9y ago

sethammons 9y ago

My first thought was, for sure, the foxes you mentioned. But on the note of no domestic animals avoid some examples of drooping ears, while I'm sure you could find supporting cases, that does not seem to be the norm for horses nor cats. And opposite that, elephants seem to have drooping ears. While the claim might be valid, it feels weak.

goofingaround 9y ago
One factor that affects the horse is that humans use ear position to assess a horse's mental state. Most trainers teach riders to pay attention to whether a horse's ears are forward, pinned back, etc. Humans therefore may actively select horses with upright ears.
- k__ 9y ago
  Also, they aren't predators

kharms 9y ago

http://www.radiolab.org/story/91696-new-nice/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/91696-new-nice/ This episode of radiolab goes into some theories about the process of fox domestication and hypothesizes that something similar might have occurred in humans. I don't remember it in enough detail to summarize, but it's a fascinating listen.

learnstats2 9y ago

It seems more likely to me that this has a human psychological cause, not a genetic cause. I suggest that - if humans associate e.g. droopy ears with being more friendly, this creates a positive feedback loop whereby those animals with droopy ears receive more positive interactions, show less fear and are modestly more likely to be selected by Belyaev's research for breeding, all other things being equal. Human bias has become a "selection pressure". This has no implication within genetics, neither genetics of the foxes nor genetics of the humans: it could simply be (increasingly) customary in society including Belyaev's. So, I strongly doubt any genetic cause.

mannykannot 9y ago
That is an interesting reversal of the causality, though if selection is involved, there would be a genetic change in either case, so sorting out the cause could be difficult. Do people see droopy ears as more friendly? I guess it indicates that the animal is not particularly alert, and so unlikely to be on the verge of aggression.
- learnstats2 9y ago
  Perhaps people today think droopy ears are more friendly just because (for example) the first domesticated animals happened by chance to have droopy ears.
travmatt 9y ago
IIRC there’s an ongoing breeding program a Russian researcher is conducting with foxes - explicitly breeding the friendliest individuals. In addition to the ears drooping, others morphological differences manifested - the friendliest animals had distinct coat patterns, curlier tails, and then later generations additionally showed shortened legs, tail, snout, upper jaw, and widened skull.
arkades 9y ago
They're also dealing with a genetic bottleneck. As they repeatedly select for a given trait, they can inadvertently select for traits that are correlated /in their original sample population/, which may not be correlated universally. That is, with a small enough sample, if it just so happened the nicest cubs had (some traits) in common, you can easily end up exaggerating those traits in later generations. The Russian study is heavily inbred. They only ever had a maximum of 2000 foxes - now bred for a few dozen generations.

smnrchrds 9y ago

How do horses fit into this?

glibgil 9y ago
They edit: ~~aren't~~ are barely domesticated. They are useful already in their wild form. They can be "broken" to recognize a dominate rider as their herd leader, but they have to always be tied or corralled. People are trained on how to approach horses, not vice-versa. Never approach a horse from behind.
- ryanx435 9y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse They are domesticated.
  - glibgil 9y ago
    Yes, but I mean to a far lesser degree than a dog. You get utility very quickly with a horse for very little trait selection. For example, you can get this far (no traits selected, completely wild, not feral) with a never-domesticated Przewalski's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovUGagVGiZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovUGagVGiZ4
- callmeaz 9y ago
  Domesticating seems like a fuzzy concept here, in the way it's being discussed. For, as dog owners, we too (well, the more.. principled ones) are trained in how to approach a pup -- or a 'misbehaving' adult dog -- and how to train/discipline the dog in turn. As someone who has owned a pregnant mare, and observed (and been involved where appropriate) in the birthing, raising, and, with time, subsequent breaking of the foal, I think horses may be born in a more 'wild' form--- but only in the loose, as-it-were sense of the word. This all said, domestication should probably be discussed in a way that's wholly specific to a species since, with the horse-dog comparison, it goes without saying that their cognitive development, experience, functional relation to humans, and genetics (unlike the wolf/dog in this regard, a premise of the article) differ in such profound ways.

Smaug123 9y ago

Have you heard of Williams Syndrome? http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/10/11/somewhat-against-psychiatric-conditions-as-domestication-failure/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/10/11/somewhat-against-psychi...

SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
This is discussed at some length in the article, which draws parallels to domestic dog behavior and Williams syndrome.

Animats 9y ago

Not one of our domestic animals can be named which has not in some country drooping ears. Neither cats nor horses have drooping ears, except for ones that have serious birth defects or mutations.

derefr 9y ago
We've never prized docility in horses the way we do in other "pets"; in most cases, we've either bred them to be easily-spooked speed monsters (race horses; courier horses), or angry muscular bulls (war horses.) And there has never really been any kind of long-term eugenics project for cats; they mostly domesticated themselves, which had different results. There are no "work cats" that we've selectively bred with other "work cats" to improve their demeanour; there are purebred cats, but they're basically assholes and we basically don't care. (Why this is, I'll never know.)
- Animats 9y ago
  Docility is much prized in horses. I've owned ex-racehorses, a Percheron war horse, an ex-police horse, and a big quiet warmblood. They're all "docile"; they'll accept training and won't bite or attack without serious provocation. Horses have been bred to be larger and more docile. The natural size for horses is a large pony. It's unclear how this started. Przewalski's horse, the last remaining feral horse breed, is not the genetic ancestor of the modern horse, but a diverging line. (Horses are somewhat different in the Americas than in Europe and Asia. They're not native. Feral horses in the Americas are descended from ones brought over from Europe by early Spanish conquerers. Amusingly, the pedigrees are known; the Spanish expeditions were Government operations and there's surviving paperwork. Most were good Andalusians.)
  - derefr 9y ago
    > They're all "docile"; they'll accept training and won't bite or attack without serious provocation. I guess I'm using "docility" a bit differently. There are two somewhat different commonly-used meanings, and it'd be helpful if they were different words: • the animals everyone tends to commonly use the word "domesticated" for, which usually have specifically eusocial behaviours, like coming and laying down beside a human. Dogs are the central example; but numerous animals, from ferrets to hamsters to pigeons, are actually like this. • the animals that aren't afraid of humans, and will tolerate their presence, and maybe learn skills from them. Horses, cows, sheep, chickens, etc. Farmers and breeders call these species "domesticated" (compared to their wild cousins), but they're not called that by lay-people. "Able to be livestock" might be what the average person would call these. (Oddly, some common "pets", like guinea pigs, are actually more in this category.) One of the major differences, in my mind, is that the animals everyone calls domesticated, like being around humans enough that—if raised in a human environment—they'll often defend their human "family member" against their own kind. But this is not a behaviour you see with the technically-domesticated species; a wolf, or a fox, or a cow, might defend its territory if it's feeling territorial, but it won't specifically defend you, even if you raised it. It knows humans are a sometimes-helpful thing, but its instincts haven't been hacked enough to consider them "kin." I'm not actually sure where horses fall on this measure, having not had much personal experience with them. Your input? --- Also, fitting into neither category, there are a few extremely-intelligent species that, by this measure, we might call "domesticated" without having had much human-mediated human interaction at all. Corvids and chimpanzees both understand human social behaviour well enough to "befriend" individual humans, but this doesn't translate to them having a default-positive association with humans in general. Also, under this distinction, I'd say that most wild animals that have assumed a "city habitat" like raccoons, skunks, squirrels, increasingly foxes in Britain, etc. are "technically domesticated." They're pretty much as docile if raised as pets as a horse or a cow would be. Definitely less unpredictable than a "pet" monkey. These species are doing the same thing cats did to get where they are; they just haven't spent as many generations evolving under the constraints cats have yet.

tzs 9y ago

> The bizarre (and still running) experiment of Dmitry Belyaev who has been raising wild silver foxes [...] What do you find bizarre about it?