Domesticity and appearance
2004-03-29 19:28:32.773983+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments
Busy busy busy the first few days of this week, so updates on the weekend's trip will have to wait. To tide you over, something that looks like a "must-read" that I've not yet had a chance to pursue too far. A little link lovin' to Jerry Kindall who had a link to Good Tempered Creatures, which is an article about breeding for domestication which, among other links, pointed to Early Canid Domestication: The Farm Fox Experiment (HTML, no pictures) (but see PDF version with pictures) which describes a 40 year long experiment to breed foxes for domesticity that found that many of the traits we find endearing, like floppy ears, appear to be a side effect of breeding for behavior.
More grist for the "beauty may not be only skin deep" mill...