Domestication

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Across
  1. 1. The domestication experiment began, and the animals were selected only for tameness. In just the fourth generation, an animal by this name consistently wagged his tail when humans approached him. None in his generation did so and this trait was not repeated until the sixth generation. In addition, the animals were becoming noticeably tame. Belyayev and the researchers were stunned that in such little time their experiment was showing results. Just how fast can these animals be domesticated? By the sixth generation, many animals were coming to the front of their cages and licking the caretakers' hands. So fast!
  2. 3. The name of the animal in the fifth generation that Lyudmila moved into a house on the experiment's grounds and lived with as part of the domestication experiment. This was the first animal that came when its name was called. This was an astonishing animal, loving and loyal in all the ways dogs are. One night, it sensed something wasn't right and ran off to bark at a security guard and settled down immediately--just like a dog--when Lyudmila began talking with the guard. It was never seen behavior, that one of the animals would seek out the threat and bark to warn a human of danger. This animal even fooled Lyudmila one day. She came to the house and saw the animal lying on the ground, seeming not even breathing. Lyudmila thought it had died and, after checking the animal, went to call a vet. She looked back and saw a crow had landed near the animal, intent on having a snack. The animal then jumped up and preyed upon the crow. This demonstrated a clear thought and planning process that had not been witnessed before. Sadly, though, this animal and all but one of her litter were slaughtered when some thugs broke into the house and killed them to sell their fur. Lyudmila and the team took this hard because the animals had not before understood that there are humans that are unkind.
  3. 4. xxxx Selection - One of Belyayev's theories. Usually, the wild will select for certain traits and won't deviate too much. For example, gray wolves, zebras, and lions all seem to adhere to a standard morphology: not too much difference between individuals. But with domesticated dogs, you see an extreme variety of traits due to domestication.
  4. 12. The Role of Hereditary xxxx of Behavior in the Process of Domestication - Belyayev was invited to give a talk at the ethology conference when it was held in Scotland. This is his presentation's title. Everyone who was anyone in the field was at this conference. This was the first time someone from the USSR was invited to such an event. Belyayev's findings astonished the community and pub Russian genetics on the map.
  5. 13. The classification given to the animals that most exhibited the markers for domestication. Animals in this category were tame, exhibited friendly behavior, tail wagging, licking or nuzzling, and seeking out human social contact. The third generation had 5% of animals in this category. The sixth had 50%, and the tenth generation was past 80%. So fast!
  6. 15. John xxxx - Finally, Russia got to host the genetics conference. In 1977, this head of the department of genetics at NC State University was invited to the Akademgorodok (where the experiment was in Novosibirsk) to evaluate the Soviet research programs. He gave the programs flying colors. Belyayev, of course, showed him the animals. Like anyone exposed to them, his heart melted. This experiment became known as the the institute's calling card, their major achievement in the field. Tons of research papers and experiments regarding these animals (genetics, behavior, and psychology) were produced.
  7. 16. The xxxx Rush - A so-called time in Prince Edward Island when beautiful pelts rose from a couple hundred dollars to $2,500 on the world market. The finest breeding pairs were selling for tens of thousands of dollars. Russian fur breeders ended up importing several of these animals. By the late 1930s, the Soviet Union was one of the top exporters of this animal's fur. However, the animals were aggressive towards humans and everyone had to wear two inch thick gloves to avoid being bitten. Belyayev started his experiment at a fur farm with a small group of these animals.
  8. 18. This is a gesture humans make when they want to call attention to something. Dogs are geniuses at studying human gestures and knowing what humans want. An an experiment, food was hidden under one of two cans. The human would then make this gesture. Dogs immediately understood what the human was doing and went for the food. It was later repeated with toys to the same results. Wolves, as dogs' cousins, did not do well with this experiment. When this experiment was done with these animals, the control and aggressive groups didn't do well, either. However, the domesticated group did on average slightly better than dogs. Considering dogs have had tens of thousands of years to study humans and get used to gestures and reading humans' faces and tones of voice, no one expected an experiment only fifty years old domesticating these animals could produce animals that were even better than dogs at reading humans and interpreting their gestures. It's said these animals are loyal and smart like dogs, independent like cats.
Down
  1. 2. Humans have tried to domesticate many animals over the eons. For example, deer have been a good food source in parts of the world. But no matter how humans tried with the dozens of deer species, only this one species of deer has been domesticated. It's the same with horses and zebras: though similar, zebras could not be domesticated. So, just because two species are similar doesn't mean both can be domesticated. So, the question is this: why can some animals be domesticated and others can't?
  2. 3. Animals in the wild engage in less of this behavior as they mature--and many different species do this. Domestication, however, seems to prolong this behavior. Indeed, domestic dogs perform this behavior all the time. This behavior is important for social interaction and in a willingness to explore one's environment. In studies, once a wild adult animal knows something is not food, they're not interested in it. But domestic animals tend to continue interacting with the object, known as object xxxx, for no other reason than amusement. The animals in the experiment were exhibiting this behavior more and more.
  3. 5. Stalin promoted this uneducated peasant man to the director position at the Academy of Sciences. He did not believe in genetics. The only experience in crop breeding he has was in cultivating sugar beets. He ruined the careers of and sometimes executed Russian scientists who believed in and worked with genetics. Proving the genetic theory of evolution would expose him as a fraud. The animal domestication experiment had to disguise itself as a way to produce better furs and as a way of looking to breed animals more than once a year to increase pelt production. It was a dangerous time to be in genetics. Belyayev, however, was difficult to touch and shut down because he was well-respected by the government for being able to produce furs that sold extremely well on the world market, giving the USSR much-needed cash. Belyayev called this man a "scientific bandit".
  4. 6. According to the experiment, it's said these optimize an animal to its environment. The findings suggested a link between the selection for tameness and changes in xxxx regulation in the stress response and social behavior. The experiment provided insights into the genetic basis of the observed xxxx changes and their connection to the broader process of domestication. Later, it was proven there were significant changes due to domestication.
  5. 7. American xxxx -After the collapse of the USSR, funding became tight. The government tried to keep the experiment funded. For a while, they succeeded. Later, though, there was no funding for anything. Lyudmila had to go out and beg passing cars for money or food to feed the animals. They couldn't even pay any of the caretakers, though some remained to work free. Lyudmila wrote an article to this magazine to tell of the experiment and its plight. She had 700 animals at the start. While waiting through the -40F Siberian winter, she couldn't keep all the animals fed. Some starved. Others--mostly in the control and aggressive groups--she had to kill and sell furs to keep the tame group fed. Finally, this magazine published her article. She dared to hope that something would come of it. Letters began to pour in from around the world, from people asking how they could donate to the experiment, some a little, some tens of thousands of dollars. The experiment continues to this day. In the early 2010s, I heard you could purchase a nonbreeding animal from the experiment for $6,000 (and it would take an additional $3,000 for paperwork and importing the animal).
  6. 8. When a mother stares into a baby's eyes, this hormone becomes elevated in each. Same when people pet a dog. Scientists tried it with a wolf and the levels were unchanged. But when interacting with the animals in Belyayev's domestication experiment, it was shown this was also elevated in both the human and animal when interacting. This is a strong indication of a bond forming between humans and their domesticated pets. The animals in this experiment have never been domesticated before, and yet this distinct situation was showing up with them when being petted.
  7. 9. This man collected more than 250,000 domesticated plant specimens, and more live specimens than anyone in history. He wrote more than 350 papers, several books, mastered more than a dozen languages, and worked in trying to solve Russia's famines through crop breeding. He traveled the world looking for domesticated plant samples and the birthplace of domesticated plant species. Through studying plants, he was able to identify eight centers of world plant domestication. His life was like a movie: after WWI, his ship struck a German mine and sunk, losing the samples he had collected in a study; he was arrested on the Iran-Russia border and accused of being a spy because he had some German textbooks with him; in the central Asia region, his was abandoned by his guide, ditched from his caravan, and was attacked by robbers; he fell between two train cars on the border of Afghanistan and was left dangling by his elbows while the train kept running; in Syria, he contracted both malaria and typhus; and he contracted dysentery many times. In the end, due to his opposition to the government's anti-genetics stance, he was forbidden to travel abroad and he was publicly denounced. He refused to back down from his conviction of genetics. He was later thrown into prison and slowly starved to death over three years.
  8. 10. The xxxx in the Science of Biology - The most disingenuous speech made in the history of science. The speaker denounced Mendelian genetics and furthered Lamarckian inheritance, saying that acquired traits could not be inherited. Lamarckian inheritance argued that traits used by an organism over its lifetime can be inherited. For example, if an organism used a particular organ extensively, that organ would become more developed and then be inherited by its offspring. Genetics, on the other hand, used DNA to pass traits on. This speech and its adoption by the Communist Party set back Russian genetics for decades, making it dangerous to work the field.
  9. 11. Man is Making a New xxxx - Belyayev died in 1985. He wanted to write a book about these animals to let the world know. This is what he wanted to call the book. Lyudmila, who was handing the experiment for him since almost its inception, continued running the experiment after his death, and to this day. She ended up writing a book with another author, but used a different title.
  10. 14. Some of the domesticated animals began making a vocalization that sounded like this sound humans make. None of the control or aggressive animals ever made this vocalization. Lyudmila made several recordings and eventually found someone to analyze the sound. The researcher said if you graphed out this sound and put it next to a human making the sound, she'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. It's eerily similar. On a side note, if you pull up any YouTube video of Finnegan Fox at SaveAFox, you can definitely hear him making the same vocalization when he's being petted.
  11. 17. Belyayev used this animal for the domestication experiment. Just how long did it take wolves to be domesticated into dogs? What pressures were involved? Did wolves self-select for domestication or did humans somehow begin breeding wolves? Who approached the other? Did it just slowly happen? Belyayev thought if they bred this animal solely on tameness, domestication could eventually follow. What other traits would follow along with domestication? Everyone would be surprised at what happened.