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Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be smaller and less agressive
- TechnicalVault 10mo agoThe selective pressure of a .338 Winchester Magnum, is not to be underestimated. Funny thing is something similar occurs in lab mice. Where a technician is selecting a mouse for cull the more aggressive mice are more likely to be the ones selected. Problem mice who kill their littermates can ruin experiments.
- attila-lendvai 10mo agosame with russian fox fur breeders. i don't remember the numbers, but after a surprisingly small number of generations the foxes turned into cat-like pets.
- pfdietz 10mo agoYes, that's a quite famous experiment, and still ongoing. Similar effects of "domestication syndrome" have recently been reported in wild urban foxes and raccoons.
- tokai 10mo agoRemember reading something about humans themselves show the signs of domestication syndrome.
- nkrisc 10mo agoNot in the literal sense (which would semantically impossible), but we have domesticated ourselves with the advent of farming and the domestication of crop plants. We fundamentally changed our own lifestyle into an agricultural one, the same we changed lifestyle of several large mammal species to co-exist with us in that agricultural lifestyle. So perhaps in some sense, maybe we actually did literally domesticated ourselves.
- antihipocrat 10mo agoWheat, barley and similar plant life have done pretty well for themselves, perhaps they domesticated us?
- lisper 10mo agoA chicken is an egg’s way of making more eggs.
- mjanx123 10mo agoThe markers of domestication in modern humans long predate the farming. 'Human' was the first animal available for domestication. There is a distinction between the domestication as set of changes in the organism and the 'applied' domestication in farming. In the applied sense, the humans on the top of the hierarchy do actually farm the humans below them.
- verisimi 10mo ago> Not in the literal sense (which would semantically impossible) Why is it impossible the humans are not domesticated? Are you making a point about language? I think this is certainly true. People in cities, where there are high amounts of people around act differently when they are in a small village or in nature with fewer or no people around.
- BurningFrog 10mo agoExecuting murderers will change the population over a few centuries.
- startupsfail 10mo agoYes, executioners do proliferate this way. They tend to run out of murderers quickly though, then use any other excuses to execute.
- Earw0rm 10mo agoOnly if they haven't yet reproduced.
- pfdietz 10mo agoI doubt it. The fraction of population that is murderers is quite small.
- BurningFrog 10mo agoIf so, you don't have to execute a lot of them to affect the murder rates!
- pfdietz 10mo agoThe question wasn't changing the murder rate now, but changing "the population over a few centuries". If it doesn't change the population genetics significantly it won't do that.
- BurningFrog 10mo agoIf 1% of men are potential murderers, and we execute 10% of them in each generation, it will have huge a impact on the murder rate over a few centuries, even though not a lot of people got executed, and the overall genetics of the population hasn't changed much.
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- dyauspitr 10mo agoTails curled, ears drooped and they became mostly white.
- jojobas 10mo agoIt wasn't for fur, they ran a long-term selective breeding experiment just to see if they can pull it off.
- rendaw 10mo agoDo lab mice breed after selection for experiments?
- 0_____0 10mo agoWhat portion of lab mice are from genetically stable inbred lines? I assumed most of them were from those lines due to their predictable characteristics. C57BL/6 being predictably kind of bitey for example
- asdff 10mo agoWhat is interesting is it is happening with urban racoons too. I'm not sure what the selective pressure might be for smaller snouts. I don't think racoons are being killed like a dangerous bear might. I'd assume if any are being actively fed for looking cute it is very few of them, and those doing the feeding wouldn't be selective about it. My best guess is that the short snout trait is in linkage with something else that is actually what is being selected upon. At least for racoons. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raccoons-are-showing-early-signs-of-domestication/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raccoons-are-show...
- raverbashing 10mo agoOne evolutionary pressure that exists in city raccoons is being run over by cars. Others might be access to food, which cute (and less aggressive) raccoons might have an easier time with
- setopt 10mo agoMy guess would be a linkage with something else as you say. Look for example at the Russian domestication of silver foxes which was done very deliberately, and bred for less aggressiveness, yet it caused physical changes in appearance like dog-like ears and tails: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
- andai 10mo agoI heard the same process has been running on humans for the last few millennia. Apparently 2% of the population was executed every year, wherein presumably the most aggressive and independently-minded individuals are overrepresented. Something something autodomestication...
- lotsofpulp 10mo agoWouldn’t the ones doing the executing be the most aggressive?
- lm28469 10mo agoIt's just a job, and the decision is backed by justice. The guy who kills a family for fun is more aggressive than the guy who execute him. I'm not even sure how you could get to any other conclusion
- lotsofpulp 10mo agoIn that scenario, the guy who kills a family is also an executioner. But in the context of a world where 2% of the population is executed every year, presumably that is one without much of a justice system, and more of a dictatorship (where the dictator and their underlings are pretty aggressive). Edit: I think "most aggressive and independently-minded individuals" needs to be defined further, because, obviously, a human without a tribe isn't going to survive long, but also no tribe wants an unpredictable wildcard. So one can be aggressive, with long term strategic thinking, but also not impulsive so as to become persona non grata. An aggressive, long term thinking individual (or group) can cull other "aggressive and independently-minded individuals" so they don't develop into threats.
- lm28469 10mo ago> the guy who kills a family is also an executioner Quite literally not... "executioner: an official who effects a sentence of capital punishment on a condemned person". An executioner is someone who is legally allowed to give death as a consequence of a judicial decision, not simply someone who kills. Words have meaning an homicide isn't a murder, a murder isn't an execution, &c.
- naian 10mo agoLooking forward to bears being domesticated.
- dmix 10mo agothat'd be a nice monthly food bill, a black bear can eat 20x as much as a dog
- sysguest 10mo agowell breed it smaller then
- dyauspitr 10mo agoI’d take it on if I could have a dog level trust bear.
- rectang 10mo ago“Widdle Yogi would never hurt nobody! Go ahead, pet hi… BAD YOGI! DROP IT NOW!”
- the__alchemist 10mo ago"He's friendly!"
- intalentive 10mo agoWe can try to breed little chihuahua or pug sized bears that will curl up at your feet.
- elcritch 10mo agoSuddenly I’m very pro genetic modification as long as we get mini pet bears. Dang it!
- deleted 10mo ago
- anothernewdude 10mo agoOh right, the animal.
- kkylin 10mo agoNot just bears it seems: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raccoons-are-showing-early-signs-of-domestication/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raccoons-are-show...
- morkalork 10mo agoCoyotes are on their way too
- toss1 10mo agoMakes sense. The more aggressive bears would be more likely to get in fights with humans, which generally turns out badly for the bear, either immediately or from being subsequently hunted down. OTOH, more cooperative bears will more likely be tolerated and even fed, like this bear (different population) who started out as a nuisance to the beekeeper[0] and now is an 'official' taste tester. [0] https://time.com/5664393/bear-beekeeper-video/ https://time.com/5664393/bear-beekeeper-video/
- bitwize 10mo agoNext step, they start speaking in an Italian accent, like this husky: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/Roc5WV-gBAY https://m.youtube.com/shorts/Roc5WV-gBAY
- ourmandave 10mo ago[flagged]
- jibal 10mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanthrope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanthrope https://nhmu.utah.edu/articles/animals-who-have-adapted-live-us https://nhmu.utah.edu/articles/animals-who-have-adapted-live...
- andrewl 10mo agoI’m all for analysis of, and challenges to, research studies. If we don’t have that we can’t do science. But I don’t like sneering, knee jerk statements like ourmandave’s Yeah, this seems related to the "raccoons becoming domesticated" bullsht.* I watched the video ourmandave pointed us to where NessieExplains points out what she says are flaws in the study suggesting raccoons are becoming domesticated: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12983-025-00583-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12983-025-00583-1 The data set and the code used to analyze the data are at https://osf.io/56xcg/overview https://osf.io/56xcg/overview. Her criticisms and conclusions may well be correct, but her video is really just her saying her conclusions are correct. She downloaded the data and did her own analysis and points to results in her spreadsheets. It all flies by quite quickly. We have to take her word for it. She also made a snarky comment about this line in the R code: # 57% Let’s see what we can do to change that! But the next lines in the code are: # what if we remove those pictures that we had issues measuring? # that would be gbifIDs: 4855527033, 4096474261, 2311326414, 4528316516 # Vector of IDs to exclude - the image quality was too bad after all ids_to_exclude <- c(4855527033, 4096474261, 4528316516, 2311326414) So the authors tell us what weak data they’re removing, but the data is still available if other researchers want to put it back in. They are not hiding anything. We do not have to take their word about their conclusions. If NessieExplains does not publish her criticisms she is asking us to take her word for what she says. She says in the video that she’s an actual raccoon biologist. According to her web site she is pursuing a master’s in biology (nessieexplains.com/about-nessie-explains/) although there is no date on the page, so she may have completed the degree already. As I say, she may well be correct, but I have no way of knowing.
- Santosh83 10mo agoWhen will humans evolve to be less aggressive before we devolve into catastrophic collapse?
- jablongo 10mo agoUpcoming: Selective pressure of AI coevolution leads to humans with a fear of unplugging things and the ability to sleep while sitting.
- Mikhail_Edoshin 10mo agoIsn't it a little too fast for "evolution"?
- ACCount37 10mo agoNot really? If there's a range of "how aggressive a bear can be", and it's mostly driven by genetics, and aggression is heavily selected against in the environment? Then you can get a considerable reduction in aggression in the span of as little as a few generations. Bear generation time is what, 5 years? They coexisted with humans for a long time now. Now, traits with weaker genetic components (i.e. if bear aggression is only 50% genetic) can take much longer. Even more so for traits with low variance, or highly complex traits and behaviors. But evolution isn't always slow. Certain changes can happen quickly - about as quickly as you can apply the selection pressure.
- scotty79 10mo agoEvolution works in bursts. Species can stay stable for millions of years and then evolve in relative blink of an eye when the environment changes.
- HarHarVeryFunny 10mo agoRight, how do you know the gene pool now mostly contains large aggressive bears that instinctively stay away from villages, and small cuddly bears that are enjoying left over pasta suppers ? Maybe it's just that many of the large aggressive bears living near villages have just been shot or scared away, but the genetics is unchanged and the offspring of large aggressive bears currently living away from villages will have no aversion to trying their luck in the village ?
- adev_ 10mo agoThe legend says that after few generations, the bears developped a taste for high quality pasta. They also refuse to eat in the trash bins of anybody that drink Cappuccino after 01:00pm in a sign of integration.
- notorandit 10mo agoLike wolves that evolved into dogs. Interesting.