Assortative Mating

The Times has an article about nice rats and ferocious rats, but they do a miserable job of making the obvious connections.

From the article:

Nice Rats, Nasty Rats: Maybe It’s All in the Genes

 

By NICHOLAS WADE

 

On an animal-breeding farm in Siberia are cages housing two colonies of rats. In one colony, the rats have been bred for tameness in the hope of mimicking the mysterious process by which Neolithic farmers first domesticated an animal still kept today. When a visitor enters the room where the tame rats are kept, they poke their snouts through the bars to be petted.

The other colony of rats has been bred from exactly the same stock, but for aggressiveness instead. These animals are ferocious. When a visitor appears, the rats hurl themselves screaming toward their bars.

...

The two strains of rat are part of a remarkable experiment started in the former Soviet Union in 1959 by Dmitri K. Belyaev. Belyaev and his brother were geneticists who believed in Mendelian theory despite the domination of Soviet science by Trofim Lysenko, who rejected Mendelian genetics.

...

Belyaev decided to study the genetics of domestication, a problem to which Darwin gave deep attention. Domesticated animals differ in many ways from their wild counterparts, and it has never been clear just which qualities were selected for by the Neolithic farmers who developed most major farm species some 10,000 years ago.

Belyaev’s hypothesis was that all domesticated species had been selected for a single criterion: tameness. This quality, in his view, had dragged along with it most of the other features that distinguish domestic animals from their wild forebears, like droopy ears, patches of white in the fur and changes in skull shape.

Belyaev chose to test his theory on the silver fox, a variant of the common red fox, because it is a social animal and is related to the dog. Though fur farmers had kept silver foxes for about 50 years, the foxes remained quite wild. Belyaev began his experiment in 1959 with 130 farm-bred silver foxes, using their tolerance of human contact as the sole criterion for choosing the parents of the next generation.

Ahh, the foxes - the Times had a fascinating article on them back in 1999, and ought to revive that link - let me know if this works (it does for me, but that may be my Times Select cookie empowering me).

Next, what about us humans?  Ann Althouse wonders the same thing, but she does not provide any links noting the phenomenon of assortative mating - one of the great sociological and biological experiments in history has been sending women off to college and jobs, so that smart men and women can meet and mate more easily.

So, a bonus thought - careful biologists will want to track the kids of any Kos Kids pairings, and researchers will wonder: what Republicans will they hate (and how fiercely) twenty years from now?

NOTE:  KIDDING!  And I'm begging you, don't start with nature/nurture.

Comments

[Extraneus]

Well, duh. Selectively eliminate all the alphas, betas and gammas, let only the omegas procreate, and guess what! They even have curved tails!

You're a good blogger, Maguire. Just enough good-natured humor and intellectual curiosity to keep the rabble roused.

[jerry]

What I found interesting in the article was the idea that fear of humans was what was being selected against in the foxes, and probably rats too, and early brain development might be behind this change. Made me wonder what fears might be selected for or against in human evolution? Fear of KOS, fear of Karl, etc....

[Bob]

talk about bad breeding... now if the NY Times would stop leaking all of our secrets maybe the muslim "rats" in the ME would start to fear us... again!

[Jim]

Stalin's massive purge of any principled or free thinkers is the human "experiment" that comes to my mind.

The asymmetry of radicals (Marxists, Islamofascists) murdering moderates but not vice-versa also comes to mind. Will that have genetic significance?

[ed]

Hmmmm.

All of that is largely irrelevant.

The real key is the changing technological dynamic that now allows nerds to procreate!

So physically we'll get smaller and weaker while our brains will get largers.

For some reason I've got an image of the Grey aliens in my mind.

[Rick Ballard]

Tom,

If you can believe this Pew study

"The Republican groups also have higher proportions of married people with children living at home. Four-in-ten Enterprisers are married and have children under age 18 living at home, as do 34% of Pro-Government Conservatives and 28% of Social Conservatives. Among Democratic groups, 28% of Disadvantaged Democrats, 23% of Conservative Democrats, and just 20% of Liberals are married and have children living at home. Conservative and Disadvantaged Democrats are just as likely as Republican groups to have children living at home, but larger percentages are single parents (14% and 19%, respectively). studying the Kos Kids would be a rather futile gesture. Unless it was to determine whether they qualified as an endangered species. The demographics in every country which has embraced socialist nihilism support the proposition that such support has rather negative reproductive results.

Evidence that patience is truly a virtue.

[PeterUK]

IIRC,liberals have become a declining species,refusing to mate or fight,the bar sinister side of the American ruling elite are becoming efete,think Bourbon,Romanoff,Sulzburger.....I thought that would cheer you up.

[Rick Ballard]

If you've been indoctrinated to believe that you live in a hopeless dystopia it's a small wonder that reproduction seems a futile gesture. Toss in a little "man is a blight on fair Gaia" and self selected sterilization seems the appropriate progressive gesture.

Optimism doesn't always win but it's always the odds on favorite.

[jerry]

Hey PeterUK, I always thought it was placid places like europe and japan that had serious problems with reproducing etc... ("refusing to mate or fight"), and what about all those efete colored shirts and ties that european men wear - what's with that?

[Tom Maguire]

Stalin's massive purge of any principled or free thinkers is the human "experiment" that comes to my mind.

Hmm, that and Pol Pot's selective extermination of anyone with an education.

[PeterUK]

Jerry,
Just as baboons have brightly coloured behinds to attract mates,so it is with with the tie wearing European.
Mating is going on at an enormous rate,it is just that high property prices and taxation preclude offspring,that and the modern child does not finish education until it is 35,only leaving home for its parents funeral.

[Alaska Jack]

OK, two thoughts:

1. The part about selection for tamability "dragging along" certain other traits made me wonder. I mean, these animals are kept in captivity, right? So that alone carries with it a different set of "pressures" than living in the wild. In an ideal experiment, you would have the foxes mating in the wild. So perhaps the other traits are resulting from some other pressure.

UPDATE: As I typed this, I realized that the animals selected for aggressiveness were also raised in captivity, but do not show these other traits (floppy ears, etc.). So perhaps that answers that question.

2. The quality that we call *tameness* is generally a juvenile characteristic. A typical wild animal will be somewhat tame as a puppy, for example, then become more aggressive as it gets older. Another way of saying this is that the mutation that a "tame" animal shows, the one we are selecting for, is a type of social retardation -- arrested development, if you will.

So I wonder if some of these physical traits (floppy ears, curly tail, narrow skull, etc) are commonly seen in adolescents.

- Alaska Jack

[Soylent Red]

Alaska:

You are correct, as least as far as dogs and cats are concerned.

Domesticated animals are in fact a variant that is kept by genetics in an eternal juvenile state. For example, wolves quit barking long before adulthood.

I would think a much more interesting experiment would be to reverse breed aggression into something like a cow. How you would do that, I don't know. But if you could, I think it would be quite useful in identifying both the genetic and environmental factors of domestication (by way of comparison).

Plus, after writing up the study, you could release the hyper-aggressive man-eating cows into a PETA convention. The Pay-Per-View revenue should cover the costs of the experiement.

[clarice]

I'm experienced, Soylent. I always swallow my coffee before reading anything with your name on it. HEH

[jerry]

Speaking of animals in captivity: would it be fair of me to say that (CIA) analysts critical of Administration policy are being selected against... that juvenile characters like trust in, and devotion to, authority... are valued by omnicient and oppressive Amdinistration Personalities - whose principles Must Transform whatever they encounter...? (Reminds me of "sell side" equity analysts for some reason.) Uh, umm, maybe I should go read that new book by (the traitor) John Dean?

[Soylent Red]

Clarice:

To stay with the theme, I'm gradually working you toward a conditioned-response.

You read my name. Coffee blasts out your nose.

Better living through science.

[larwyn]

Speaking of RATS!
I'm not up on all the threads but just found some gems on NewBusters
- Leopold, LJ, Bill Press and Chris Matthews are subjects -
turn out to the DUMB RATS:

Bill Press Gets Tricked by 'Lovenstein IQ' Hoax
Posted by Greg Sheffieldon July 25, 2006 - 18:48.
On his official site, BillPressShow.com, Bill Press offers a podcast and commentary. He would have been well to ask for "credentials" and "sources" when he reported on the "Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania" and their IQ study that the last six Republican presidents have had an average IQ of 115.5, while the last six Democrats had an average IQ of 156. Press proudly noted that it was with "President Clinton leading the class at 182."

As for George W. Bush:
You guessed it again: George W. Bush, with his rock bottom IQ of 91: seven points lower than his Daddy. So now we know. Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Social Security, Medicare, Stem Cells, FEMA, the deficit, immigration… The reason George Bush has screwed up in so many areas the last six years. He’s not just incompetent. He’s just plain dumb – the dumbest president in the last 50 years. \
READ IT ALL

Matthews Goes on Tirade Against Empty-Headed Bush, Yearns for 'Smarter' President

Posted by Brent Baker on July 25, 2006 - 21:29.
Declaring that "I think the next President's got to be stronger and smarter than this one," on Tuesday's Imus in the Morning, MSNBC's Chris Matthews went on a tirade for over two minutes against President Bush and those around him who filled his intellectual vacuum. Don Imus pleaded: "Did you plan on taking a breath at any point?""It's all ideology with this crowd. All they care about is ideology,” Matthews fretted as he charged: “The President bought it hook, line and sinker.” Matthews delivered insults as he asserted that Bush “trusts the intellectuals, the guys he knew at school. You know, they're a bunch of pencil-necks and now he buys completely their ideology because he didn't have one of his own coming in. That was his problem. I don't know what Bush stood for except 'I'm a cool guy and Gore isn't.'” The Hardball host yearned: “I hope the next election isn't a problem of who goes to bed with their wife at 9:30 at night or who knows how to tell a joke on a stage, but it's who has the sense of strength that comes from having read books most of their life, tried to understand history.” Though Matthews didn't warn of “every single” bad development in Iraq, he contended that “every single thing that's happened in Iraq was predicted by history” and lamented that “Bush didn't have the academic background to challenge” the ignorant ideologues who ignored history. (Transcript follows)

READ IT ALL:

Bet Matthews picked up on the Bill Press post and has big plans for the meme.

Leftist Reporter Forges Emails, Smears Blogger Who Dares to Question 'Truth'

Posted by Matthew Sheffield on July 25, 2006 - 15:27.

Jason Leopold

If there ever were a contest for the most deranged left-wing journalist, the guy with the biggest head start would have to be Jason Leopold, the fabulist most recently embarrassed for his phony report that White House aide Karl Rove had been indicted May 12. Since his journalism was exposed as fraudulent, he's been on a tear lashing out at anyone daring to question him.

But Leopold hasn't stopped there. Most recently, he's been involved in complicated sock puppet scandal, posting comments defending himself under pseudonyms on various blogs, disclosing others' private information, and hurling around accusations of forgery and pedophilia. Instead of being alone in his deranged quest, however, Leopold seems to have a few others helping him in his quest for truth, including Larry Johnson, an obsessed former CIA employee who has become known as one of the most quoted defenders of Bush-hater Joe Wilson. Leopold's retinue also seems to include his former colleague at the leftist news site RawStory, Larisa Alexandrovna.

READ IT ALL:

[PeterUK]

"You read my name. Coffee blasts out your nose."

Do that,eliminating the cup of coffee, and you have the new Starbucks

[cathyf]

...hyper-aggressive man-eating cows...

Note that this isn't all that complicated. The male of the exact same species is known for just this trait.

(We went to a steer show where one of my son's classmates was showing. Another classmate's dad explained to my son what a "steer" is. Ah, the joys of rural life. At least my kids know that milk always comes from a "she", and where steak, hambuger and bacon come from!)

And another thing, PUK, I have only one thing to say to you: EWWWWWWW!!!

cathy :-)