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50 Years of Domesticating Foxes For Science
gamebittk writes "In 1959, Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev set out to breed a tamer fox that would be easier for their handlers in the Russian fur industry to work with. Much to the scientist's shock, changes no one had expected emerged after just 10 generations. The foxes began behaving playfully, were smaller in size, and even changed color — much like dogs."
Belyaev died in 1985, but the experiment continued (PDF) in his absence, and to this day provides strong evidence to parts of evolutionary theory. The experiment eventually branched out to involve other species as well.
"Never the less, it's always scary when humans play god. Something is going to happen eventually, so should be really careful about it."
We are talking about breeding foxes here. Just like breeding dogs/cats/horses/plants, which is done by tens of thousands (hundreds? millions?) of people the world over, and has been for thousands of years.
Selective breeding is evolution but not by natural selection. Exactly same process - i.e. only some survive to pass their genes on to the next generation based on traits. Not sure where you are going with this existing information crap - also no such thing as devolution - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_devolution.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
The idea that comes into my head when I hear the word "evolution" is a process by which life as we know it developed from very, very simple organisms.
Well, yes... And then those very, very simple organisms became less simple... And then those less simple organisms became just simple... And then those simple organisms became kind of complex...
Just because an organism is currently fairly complex, doesn't mean evolution has somehow magically stopped. Evolution is happening everywhere, 24/7.
The process mentioned in the article is not this.
Yes it is.
It's being guided by human beings, instead of natural forces... And it's been taking place over a short timeframe... But it's still evolution. The exact same kind of stuff that created all the biodiversity on this planet.
No new genetic information has been added to the gene pool.
Again the "information" word.
If I breed a new kind of fox with black fur, instead of red... Is that new information? Is that more information, or less? What if some fox randomly mutates and is born with neon green fur? Is that new information? More information? Less?
All that has occurred is that existing genes have been rearranged.
Well, but that's kind of the point.
I mean, we've only got the four bases... They can only combine in so many different ways... It's all about the order of the base pairs.
Just like binary - you've only got two digits, it's the order that matters.
You cannot continue the same process and get a cow or an elephant.
Probably not. Not because this isn't evolution, but because those are two very specific and unique species. It would take a hell of a lot of work, and more understanding than we currently have, to turn a fox into an elephant.
But, if we were to keep this up long enough we could very well wind up with an entirely new non-fox species.
The way mutations are worked into the gene pool seems, to me, to be the main interesting thing about evolution, and this article has nothing to do that.
Mutations are essential to biodiversity. They're what introduce new and different things.
Which is specifically why they're avoided and weeded out in selective breeding. With selective breeding you have a specific trait that you are intentionally trying to emphasize. You want to avoid random mutation as much as possible and, to the best of your ability, produce a predictable result.
Also, now I really want a pet fox.
Agreed.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
"we didn't really evolve that much since we got ourselves these big brainy things that we use for thinking."
This isn't true, actually. We did evolve, and a lot too (because although not much time has passed, populations are much higher). The thing is, it's not the "evolution" of racial theorists, of bigger brains or better skills. It's mostly resistance to disease, and adaption to more monotonous diets. When you have a population of half a billion, and half of them die from disease and/or malnutrition before reaching maturity, there's a lot of selection pressure, even over a few generations. Especially since we're talking about new diseases (big crowd diseases) and new diets ("high carb"...) that we haven't already spent millions of years adapting to.
(I guess disease and malnutrition is what keeps seagull population stable as well, but there it is in the form it has always been - they're probably pretty well optimized to it already)
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