If you're interested in animal domestication (and let's face it, who isn't?), you should read this article (PDF) describing a Soviet/Russian experiment over 40 years to domesticate the silver fox. It turns out that domestication can happen in just a few decades when artificially selecting solely for temperament, contradicting previous ideas that held that domestication of animals in human (pre-)history spanned millennia. They also found some interesting results in how characteristics of the animals that were seemingly unrelated to temperament changed in the sample population to mirror those same characteristics in other domesticate mammals, such as floppy ears, broader faces, and changes in mating cycles. It's neat stuff.

¶ 1199 Posted at 04.11 PM ⇒ No Comments ( interesting | science! )