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by arkades
3174 days ago
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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. |
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It's been theorized that this has to do with the neural crest, which is an embryonic structure that the adrenal medulla develops out of. The adrenal medulla produces hormones involved in stress and fear, and so an animal with a less active adrenal medulla would probably be more amenable to domestication.
Several other things also develop out of the embryonic crest, so it could be that which ties together domestication and those various other traits that seem to go with it across many species.