As we saw in class, artificial selection is a powerful tool and perhaps gives us a view on how natural selection works if we had the perspective of millions of years as opposed to decades. Through our simulation we saw how humans have "selected" physical and behavioral characteristics for dogs. Check out this
article summarizing an experiment in which researchers selectively bred for aggression in rats. Please respond to this thread with your comments.
Artificial selection is when the breeder manually selects traits manually alters evolution. It's the same as natural selection just that it isn't done naturally or through trial and error.
ReplyDeleteBased on the article, is it possible to remove the fear of humans as predators from wolves, and then domesticate them within say, 35-50 generations?
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ReplyDeletethis was a presumly interesting. Mr. Albert mixed two sorts of rats together in order to formulate common grounds.this was a presumly interesting. Mr. Albert mixed two sorts of rats together in order to formulate common grounds.
ReplyDeleteThis was interesting. Mr. Albert conducted an experiment with tame rats and ferocious rats. It was based on artificial selection though, which I don't think is right. I believe that evolution should occur naturally. We humans need to stop meddling with these processes and just let them do their own thing!
ReplyDeleteSome strategies in this article are familiar to the artificial selection exercises we did in class in groups of two. We mixed the different breeds of dogs to come out with traits best suited for hunting. In the article Mr. Albert crossed tamed rats together with ferocious rats to see what trait the progeny will inherit. He wants to examine how the genes of the different types of rats will differ. According to the article the genes are presumably the same in all domesticated mammals. He said if he can indicate the genetic differences of the rats he would be able to compare the human genome to the chimp genome to see if they show a similar difference.
ReplyDeletewhew that was a very long story and i started to lose interest towards the end but it stood out to me when he said that dogs can understand humans better tan chips which have larger brains. if you think about it,over generations humans have been more interactive towards dogs than chips.
ReplyDeleteArtificial selection is very constructed. The researchers in Russia experimentally made the tame wolves and rats who could adapt as house pets but those who stayed wild would never be able to because they are not use to humans... they view humans as predators; therefore, animals who were not artificially breed will never be able to be house pets due to the fear of a human and their biological wild nature!
ReplyDeleteThis article was very interesting. Humans really manipulate a lot of animals. I guess it's for the better though. Artificial breeding should be used on humans like Alexis so we can have a more tamed human race :D
ReplyDeleteArtificial selection is effective, but it also interferes with mother nature. I don't think rats, or any animal, should be artificially selected just to show what important genes they possess that cause certain traits. Ferocious rats should be left as they are, shucks. Why do humans feel the need to figure everything out?
ReplyDeleteThe article was interesting. I see how artificial selection can speed up the process of evolution
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting part of the article was Dr. Hare’s experiment with dogs and foxes. His found that because of domestication for tameness, dogs were able to understand human gestures. Foxes on the other hand, didn’t because of their fear towards humans. The dogs were more trusting while the foxes were more aggressive. The experiment shows how effective artificial selection is.
ReplyDeletecool beans with awesome sauce. The experiment examples artificial selection on the domestication of animals for tameness. intresting. makes me think if we can tame weird animals....like peacocks. Take away their fear towards humans & tame them to be house pets. it would be un-artificial slection if the peacocks were already domesticated, plus it would save alot of time. who cares though *smiley face*
ReplyDeleteThis article was surprisingly interesting . I imagined myself walking into the lab and seeing these aggressive rats and friendly rats. I suddenly.got this creepy and scared feeling. I assumed its because I wasn't use to seeing rats in that nature. Its also creepy to see foxes act as house pets. Isn't that messing with the circle of life? Lol :) but now I actually understand how artificial selection effects evolution.
ReplyDeleteThe article was shocking. I never thought colonies of rats could have been trained to be aggressive and another colony friendly. Scientist using artificial selection is cool. The article made me understand selection more.
ReplyDeleteI've heard of this somewhere before this is very interesting and odd. This gives me better knowledge about the selectioin process.
ReplyDeleteRats?! Really?! Pretty interesting that rats can be tamed. Artificial selection is evolution on fastforward. Artificial selection allow us to withness the process of evolution in a human's life time.
ReplyDeleteIt was cool to get an understanding of how natural selection could be accelerated to obtain similar/desired results in artificial selection with such less time.
ReplyDelete@soray
ReplyDeleteLet's be clear, these rats were not "trained" right? They were selected for breeding based upon certain observed behavioral characteristics. This is an enormous difference. It is in fact the difference between "nature" and "nurture", or "heredity" and "environment"
mrs.rious dont be mad at me i know im bukoooooo late with commenting on this ....but the article was very intresting it i understand selection more now :)
ReplyDeleteEwwwww RATS!!!! But I see how scientist conduct experiments just by using them hairy things.. it was kind of interesting too
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