[ExI] interesting new NOVA episodes

[Dave Sill]

Speaking of NOVA, did anyone catch "Dogs Decoded"? I thought the whole thing
was fascinating, but two things especially interesting. One was an
experiment in which people raised first puppies then wolf cubs. Dogs and
wolves are genetically identical, but as the cubs grew up they didn't bond
with their people and acted like wild animals. The second was the Russian
experiment to domesticate silver foxes by selective breeding. They've been
doing it for 50 years and have bred both a calmer strain and a
more aggressive-to-humans one. Again, they're all genetically "the same",
but when they have a tame mother raise an aggressive cub, it doesn't calm
down at all. They've also found that as the calm strain becomes more
domesticated, it gets more and more dog-like: shorter tail, curly tail,
white markings, etc.

It seems like a likely explanation for these two cases is epigenetics, but
the NOVA episode said nothing about that.

-Dave
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