Extraordinary Russian experiments suggest that many other characteristics of domesticated animals — physical characteristics such as changes in coloration, rolled tails and differences in skull shape — come along if all you breed for is ‘tameness’, i.e. tolerance of humans. This work, which has been done in foxes and rats, seems to hold across species. A relatively small number of genes — or perhaps even one — may control the traits associated with domestication. And the factor linking all this may be the embryonic neural crest, a structure which is the source of cells that will form the face, skull, pigment, elements of the nervous system and the adrenal glands, which control stress hormone release and aspects of the fight or flight reaction. If you select for animals with less constitutional fear, they may be able to see humans as social collaborators instead; they may appear ‘smarter’ than their wild forebears. It is not outlandish to speculate that selecting for tame animals is selecting for underdevelopment, or delayed development, of the neural crest.
And… there are some suggestions that humans are self-selecting themselves for domestic attributes, which may bear some genetic and embryonic similarity (although you would not know it if you look at the state of disharmony and belligerency in the world…) (New York Times via abby)
Does anyone remember the witty and clever 1980 film by Alain Resnais, Mon Uncle d’Amerique? Resnais made it as a collaboration with French biologist Henri Laborit and an homage to his theories about the ways in which the conditions of civilized life inherently conflict with our human nature. Some of the most hilarious moments of the film, in which Resnais jumpcuts from the dilemmas the main characters face to analogous vignettes with lab rats in their cages, upon which Laborit expounds, suggest that the central problem of modernity is the demand that the fight or flight reaction be inhibited. The highly original pathos of the film, and Resnais’ and Laborit’s compassion for their characters, is framed through this lens. But if we are, as the new research leads one to speculate, auto-domesticated, perhaps we ought not to be the objects of Laborit’s sympathetic gaze after all. Perhaps, instead, we should be pitied for having the spunk bred out of us altogether.
