How We Bred 7 Animals Into Biological Disasters

What the film says

1. In 1868 Charles Darwin described traits shared by domestic animals but not by their wild ancestors, a pattern now called domestication syndrome.

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2. Dmitry Belyaev's fox experiment began selecting silver foxes for tameness in 1959.

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3. Within about six generations some foxes eagerly sought human contact and whimpered for attention.

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4. Belyaev died in 1985 and Lyudmila Trut continued the experiment until her death in October 2024.

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5. The last known aurochs died in Jaktorów forest in Poland in 1627.

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6. A 2018 genomic study concluded that Przewalski's horses descend from horses of the Botai culture of Kazakhstan, about 5,500 years ago, rather than being a never-domesticated population.

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7. Broiler chickens' fast growth leaves them prone to heart failure and painful skeletal problems.

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