One of the many many 🤯 bits from James Scott’s Against the Grain which I’ve mentioned before:
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By selecting the least aggressive (most tame) from among 130 silver foxes and breeding them to one another repeatedly, the experimenters produced, in only ten generations, 18 percent of progeny that exhibited extremely tame behavior—whining, wagging their tails, and responding favorably to petting and handling as a domestic dog might. After twenty generations of such breeding, the percentage of extremely tame foxes nearly doubled to 35 percent.
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So in 10 generations – which is just 10 years in fox time because incredibly, it takes a fox just 10 months to reach breeding age – almost 1/5 of offspring become pet-like.
And then I think about human reproduction, and the power of culture and institutions to selectively breed us (I’m not saying such behavior is fully conscious or purposeful, but it certainly is interesting!)