What is it about?
Domesticated animals tend to develop many shared traits, such as increased reproduction, reduced stress sensitivity and different growth patterns. Our results suggest that in chickens, such traits may be a result of correlated responses to the inevitable selection for reduced fear of humans occurring early during domestication history.
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Why is it important?
It adds to our knowledge about evolution, and about domestication, one of the most important historical events in history of mankind. In addition, it may help understanding welfare issues associated with modern breeding of animals.
Perspectives
Scientists disagree whether domestication changes are a result of human selection of each trait independently, or whether they develop as larger complexes, driven by human selection of only one or two key traits. Our findings show that tameness may be such a key trait, and I suggest this might be true also for other domesticated animals.
Professor Per Jensen
Linkopings universitet
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This page is a summary of: Is domestication driven by reduced fear of humans? Boldness, metabolism and serotonin levels in divergently selected red junglefowl ( Gallus gallus ) , Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences, September 2015, Royal Society Publishing,
DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2015.0509.
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