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.
What is interesting is it is happening with urban racoons too. I'm not sure what the selective pressure might be for smaller snouts. I don't think racoons are being killed like a dangerous bear might. I'd assume if any are being actively fed for looking cute it is very few of them, and those doing the feeding wouldn't be selective about it.
My best guess is that the short snout trait is in linkage with something else that is actually what is being selected upon. At least for racoons.
What portion of lab mice are from genetically stable inbred lines? I assumed most of them were from those lines due to their predictable characteristics. C57BL/6 being predictably kind of bitey for example
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.
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.
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.
> Not in the literal sense (which would semantically impossible)
Why is it impossible the humans are not domesticated? Are you making a point about language?
I think this is certainly true. People in cities, where there are high amounts of people around act differently when they are in a small village or in nature with fewer or no people around.
The markers of domestication in modern humans long predate the farming.
'Human' was the first animal available for domestication.
There is a distinction between the domestication as set of changes in the organism and the 'applied' domestication in farming.
In the applied sense, the humans on the top of the hierarchy do actually farm the humans below them.
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.
I’m all for analysis of, and challenges to, research studies. If we don’t have that we can’t do science. But I don’t like sneering, knee jerk statements like ourmandave’s Yeah, this seems related to the "raccoons becoming domesticated" bullsht.*
I watched the video ourmandave pointed us to where NessieExplains points out what she says are flaws in the study suggesting raccoons are becoming domesticated:
Her criticisms and conclusions may well be correct, but her video is really just her saying her conclusions are correct. She downloaded the data and did her own analysis and points to results in her spreadsheets. It all flies by quite quickly. We have to take her word for it. She also made a snarky comment about this line in the R code:
# 57% Let’s see what we can do to change that!
But the next lines in the code are:
# what if we remove those pictures that we had issues measuring?
# that would be gbifIDs: 4855527033, 4096474261, 2311326414, 4528316516
# Vector of IDs to exclude - the image quality was too bad after all
ids_to_exclude <- c(4855527033, 4096474261, 4528316516, 2311326414)
So the authors tell us what weak data they’re removing, but the data is still available if other researchers want to put it back in. They are not hiding anything. We do not have to take their word about their conclusions. If NessieExplains does not publish her criticisms she is asking us to take her word for what she says.
She says in the video that she’s an actual raccoon biologist. According to her web site she is pursuing a master’s in biology (nessieexplains.com/about-nessie-explains/) although there is no date on the page, so she may have completed the degree already.
As I say, she may well be correct, but I have no way of knowing.
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.
What is interesting is it is happening with urban racoons too. I'm not sure what the selective pressure might be for smaller snouts. I don't think racoons are being killed like a dangerous bear might. I'd assume if any are being actively fed for looking cute it is very few of them, and those doing the feeding wouldn't be selective about it.
My best guess is that the short snout trait is in linkage with something else that is actually what is being selected upon. At least for racoons.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raccoons-are-show...
What portion of lab mice are from genetically stable inbred lines? I assumed most of them were from those lines due to their predictable characteristics. C57BL/6 being predictably kind of bitey for example
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.
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.
Remember reading something about humans themselves show the signs of domestication syndrome.
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.
> Not in the literal sense (which would semantically impossible)
Why is it impossible the humans are not domesticated? Are you making a point about language?
I think this is certainly true. People in cities, where there are high amounts of people around act differently when they are in a small village or in nature with fewer or no people around.
The markers of domestication in modern humans long predate the farming. 'Human' was the first animal available for domestication. There is a distinction between the domestication as set of changes in the organism and the 'applied' domestication in farming. In the applied sense, the humans on the top of the hierarchy do actually farm the humans below them.
Wheat, barley and similar plant life have done pretty well for themselves, perhaps they domesticated us?
A chicken is an egg’s way of making more eggs.
Executing murderers will change the population over a few centuries.
Yes, executioners do proliferate this way. They tend to run out of murderers quickly though, then use any other excuses to execute.
It wasn't for fur, they ran a long-term selective breeding experiment just to see if they can pull it off.
Tails curled, ears drooped and they became mostly white.
Do lab mice breed after selection for experiments?
Looking forward to bears being domesticated.
that'd be a nice monthly food bill, a black bear can eat 20x as much as a dog
We can try to breed little chihuahua or pug sized bears that will curl up at your feet.
Suddenly I’m very pro genetic modification as long as we get mini pet bears. Dang it!
well breed it smaller then
How does that compare to a horse? I want a saddle-broken bear.
I’d take it on if I could have a dog level trust bear.
“Widdle Yogi would never hurt nobody! Go ahead, pet hi… BAD YOGI! DROP IT NOW!”
"He's friendly!"
The coon's too: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raccoons-are-show...
Upcoming: Selective pressure of AI coevolution leads to humans with a fear of unplugging things and the ability to sleep while sitting.
Not just bears it seems: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raccoons-are-show...
Coyotes are on their way too
Next step, they start speaking in an Italian accent, like this husky: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/Roc5WV-gBAY
or worse, till we breed softer claws, speaking with their hands
soon they'll be helping nonas with the focaccia
Well, that region already has a kind of cake called "bear bread" (Pan dell'orso) so it's only fair bears start to make it.
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.
[0] https://time.com/5664393/bear-beekeeper-video/
Oh right, the animal.
When will humans evolve to be less aggressive before we devolve into catastrophic collapse?
For what it’s worth, I think even the worst outcomes wouldn’t necessarily force us to extinction. Would be a bit of a reset though.
Catastrophic collapse will come because people believe in Darwin's theory, and the collapse will be well deserved
You’re a fan of Lamarck?
And which theory about God do you think lacks merit?
Yeah, this seems related to the "raccoons becoming domesticated" bullsh*t.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qI-Dd4MqYEc
tldw; raccoon study was flawed.
I’m all for analysis of, and challenges to, research studies. If we don’t have that we can’t do science. But I don’t like sneering, knee jerk statements like ourmandave’s Yeah, this seems related to the "raccoons becoming domesticated" bullsht.*
I watched the video ourmandave pointed us to where NessieExplains points out what she says are flaws in the study suggesting raccoons are becoming domesticated:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12983-025-00583-1
The data set and the code used to analyze the data are at https://osf.io/56xcg/overview.
Her criticisms and conclusions may well be correct, but her video is really just her saying her conclusions are correct. She downloaded the data and did her own analysis and points to results in her spreadsheets. It all flies by quite quickly. We have to take her word for it. She also made a snarky comment about this line in the R code:
But the next lines in the code are: So the authors tell us what weak data they’re removing, but the data is still available if other researchers want to put it back in. They are not hiding anything. We do not have to take their word about their conclusions. If NessieExplains does not publish her criticisms she is asking us to take her word for what she says.She says in the video that she’s an actual raccoon biologist. According to her web site she is pursuing a master’s in biology (nessieexplains.com/about-nessie-explains/) although there is no date on the page, so she may have completed the degree already.
As I say, she may well be correct, but I have no way of knowing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanthrope
https://nhmu.utah.edu/articles/animals-who-have-adapted-live...