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Title: "A rat in hand: an experimental animal model of domestication"
Speaker: Professor Nandini Singh, Dept of Anthropology, California State University, Sacramento
Abstract:
Dmitry Belyaev’s domestication experiments conducted on a number of species, most notably on silver foxes, have demonstrated that selecting for tame behaviors was the precursor to all genotypic and phenotypic traits associated with domestication. It has also been proposed that humans are a “self-domesticated” species. In fact, certain modern human-specific traits compared to other Pleistocene hominins are considered byproducts of behavioral shifts towards increased social tolerance in Homo sapiens. Along with silver foxes, Belyaev also bred colonies of rats selected for either tameness or defensive aggression. While the behavioral and genetic aspects of these rats have been widely published, little work has been done on their skeletal morphology. In this talk, I will introduce the rat model of domestication, discuss the effects of selection on the craniofacial morphology of both the tame and defensive aggressive strains and present findings that suggest the defensive aggressive rats do not accurately represent the wildtype morphological condition against which to compare the tame, domesticated morphology.
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