The 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•2h ago
same 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•2h ago
Yes, 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•56m ago
Remember reading something about humans themselves show the signs of domestication syndrome.
nkrisc•51m ago
Not 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.
dyauspitr•15m ago
Tails curled, ears drooped and they became mostly white.
naian•5d ago
Looking forward to bears being domesticated.
dmix•2h ago
that'd be a nice monthly food bill, a black bear can eat 20x as much as a dog
sysguest•2h ago
well breed it smaller then
dyauspitr•14m ago
I’d take it on if I could have a dog level trust bear.
Makes 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.
TechnicalVault•5d ago
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•2h ago
pfdietz•2h ago
tokai•56m ago
nkrisc•51m ago
dyauspitr•15m ago