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Well, they've got fancy procedures in there, too: > So what our colleague Duyan Tao did - he, at an early stage, around 10 days after the [by-human-hand] polli

Well, they've got fancy procedures in there, too: > So what our colleague Duyan Tao did - he, at an early stage, around 10 days after the [by-human-hand] pollination, went in there and dissected out the very young embryo that was developing and put it in tissue culture and gave it nutrients to help it grow. And then he rescued one of these seedlings. And that was the beginning of it. Also, the "old-fashioned genetic engineering" of selective breeding of animals/plants is...not as old-fashioned as you may think. Animal husbandry has been around for millennia (or longer), but it was an undirected process prior to the work of Robert Bakewell in the 1700s. Thanks to his groundbreaking work (and a lot of refinements from others), humanity learned how to shape the trajectories of other species. I like this quote from Bakewell's wikipedia page[0]: > In 1700, the average weight of a bull sold for slaughter was 370 pounds (168 kg). By 1786, that weight had more than doubled to 840 pounds (381 kg). (Obviously, humanity has gone on to be much more aggressive and successful with selective breeding. Beef cattle are now usually 1200-1400 pounds at slaughter, for example. Though, personally, I'd say we've gone "too far" when you learn about the horrors of modern, industrialized animal agriculture.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bakewell_(agriculturalist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bakewell_(agriculturali...

NikolaNovak 4y ago
Arr we saying that cattle today are 4 times the weight of 400yrs ago?
- ccooffee 4y ago
  That's a very good point. I'm currently suspecting that the numbers quoted in Blakewell's article are the "hot carcass" weight (i.e. subtracting bone, head, and organs from the total weight). An Aurochs (wild ancestor of domesticated cattle) could reach 1300 lbs in the 1500s (and possibly in excess of 3300 lbs prior to recorded history, according to archaeological finds)[0]. If the numbers are hot-carcass weight, we would be seeing: 1700: 370 lbs, 1789: 840 lbs, 2020: 880 lbs [1] But, uhh, that doesn't feel right either. I think that wikipedia page could use some additional citations, but I'm struggling to find useful numbers with which to update. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs [1] https://beef.unl.edu/beefwatch/2020/how-many-pounds-meat-can-we-expect-beef-animal https://beef.unl.edu/beefwatch/2020/how-many-pounds-meat-can...
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Domestic animals in the Middle Ages were definitely smaller than today, you can see it in illustrations that depict agricultural work. For people who lived in swampy areas (e.g. north of England), having lighter animals with longer legs was actually preferrable. Meat-and-fat balls of today would get stuck and drown in mires.
  - dgb23 4y ago
    Regular cows getting stuck and breaking their legs still happens sometimes except maybe in industrial farming. The cows in the Swiss alps (Wallis) for example are much sturdier and smaller to accommodate for rocky and steep terrain.
colatkinson 4y ago
Ehh it's getting into pedantic territory as to what counts as directed vs undirected, but people figured out pretty quick that if you have an animal with a desirable trait you can breed it with others to maybe get offspring that also have that trait. As an illustrative example, consider the fancy pigeon (see [0] for some pics). One of Darwin's original areas of study was to prove that these birds, many of which have cool-looking but incredibly maladaptive traits, were actually the same species as the pigeons you'd see on a London street. Prior to that, the scientific consensus was that these were fully distinct species -- i.e. the artificial selection happened so long ago that it was lost to time. Given some breeds have trouble even eating (e.g. look at the beak on this guy [1]), I think it's a pretty safe assumption that this breeding did not happen without careful human intervention. That's not to say that the kind/degree of artificial selection we see in industrial agriculture isn't worlds away from older forms. Once you've got the basics of evolution and the scale of capitalist production, you're starting down the road to the current world of 100 pound antibiotic-riddled chickens in rows of 10000 cages. But humans have been selectively breeding animals for food, utility, or just because we kinda felt like it since time immemorial. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fancy_pigeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fancy_pigeon [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Frill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Frill

NikolaNovak 4y ago

Arr we saying that cattle today are 4 times the weight of 400yrs ago?

ccooffee 4y ago
That's a very good point. I'm currently suspecting that the numbers quoted in Blakewell's article are the "hot carcass" weight (i.e. subtracting bone, head, and organs from the total weight). An Aurochs (wild ancestor of domesticated cattle) could reach 1300 lbs in the 1500s (and possibly in excess of 3300 lbs prior to recorded history, according to archaeological finds)[0]. If the numbers are hot-carcass weight, we would be seeing: 1700: 370 lbs, 1789: 840 lbs, 2020: 880 lbs [1] But, uhh, that doesn't feel right either. I think that wikipedia page could use some additional citations, but I'm struggling to find useful numbers with which to update. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs [1] https://beef.unl.edu/beefwatch/2020/how-many-pounds-meat-can-we-expect-beef-animal https://beef.unl.edu/beefwatch/2020/how-many-pounds-meat-can...
inglor_cz 4y ago
Domestic animals in the Middle Ages were definitely smaller than today, you can see it in illustrations that depict agricultural work. For people who lived in swampy areas (e.g. north of England), having lighter animals with longer legs was actually preferrable. Meat-and-fat balls of today would get stuck and drown in mires.
- dgb23 4y ago
  Regular cows getting stuck and breaking their legs still happens sometimes except maybe in industrial farming. The cows in the Swiss alps (Wallis) for example are much sturdier and smaller to accommodate for rocky and steep terrain.

colatkinson 4y ago

Ehh it's getting into pedantic territory as to what counts as directed vs undirected, but people figured out pretty quick that if you have an animal with a desirable trait you can breed it with others to maybe get offspring that also have that trait. As an illustrative example, consider the fancy pigeon (see [0] for some pics). One of Darwin's original areas of study was to prove that these birds, many of which have cool-looking but incredibly maladaptive traits, were actually the same species as the pigeons you'd see on a London street. Prior to that, the scientific consensus was that these were fully distinct species -- i.e. the artificial selection happened so long ago that it was lost to time. Given some breeds have trouble even eating (e.g. look at the beak on this guy [1]), I think it's a pretty safe assumption that this breeding did not happen without careful human intervention. That's not to say that the kind/degree of artificial selection we see in industrial agriculture isn't worlds away from older forms. Once you've got the basics of evolution and the scale of capitalist production, you're starting down the road to the current world of 100 pound antibiotic-riddled chickens in rows of 10000 cages. But humans have been selectively breeding animals for food, utility, or just because we kinda felt like it since time immemorial. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fancy_pigeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fancy_pigeon [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Frill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Frill