We all grew up believing it
would take long periods of time,
a slow process of evolution, in
order to involve,
in order to transform a wolf
into a dog.
But, boy, from the
archaeological records or
whatever,
it was an instant of
time.
How could it be possible for one
species to evolve suddenly into another.
Clues were to emerge
unexpectedly from
an experiment conducted in the
old Soviet Union.
I really think that the Belyaev
experiments was one of the most
significant experiments in
evolution that took place in the
twentieth century,
and it affected my life and my
thinking in so many ways.
The experiment was begun in the
1950s at a fox farm in Siberia.
The foxes were being bred
for their fur,
but they were wild animals that
were hard to handle and
often too stressed to breed.
Dmitry Belyaev, a geneticist,
was taken on to see if he could
develop foxes that would be
easier to keep.
He began his experiment by
breeding together those
foxes with the least excitable
temperaments.
Belyaev selected foxes by a
simple method.
He extended a gloved hand into
each animal's cage.
The foxes that attacked,
cowered,
or bit him were excluded from breeding.
But those that showed tolerance
or curiosity were mated together.
In effect, Belyaev was selecting
the foxes for their flight distance.
The subsequent results were
staggering.
The new generations of foxes
were transformed,
not just in behavior but in
their appearance.
Within just ten years, the
selected foxes showed new
variety in their color.
Some were born with mottled
coats or black
and white patches.
Their ears became floppy.
They started to bark, vocalize.
They became highly playful even
into adulthood and were no
longer afraid of people.
Some of the foxes even began to
answer to their names.
Belyaev had stumbled across the
discovery that selecting for the
quality of tameness alone could
set off a cascade of other changes.
We can still see evidence of
this quantum leap at the same
research center today.
Up to that point, we all kind of
believed Darwin,
and Darwin said nature does not
go in leaps.
Things don't happen fast.
They happen gradually.
And the answer was with Belyaev
experiment - he was wrong.
They do go in leaps and
sometimes big leaps.
Things that you wouldn't expect.
The theory is here that we're
dealing with some underlying
structure.
When we're dealing with
tameness,
we're dealing with a set of
genetics that is producing a
characteristic response.
It is not a coincidence that
many domesticated animals are
black and white.
When selection is made for
tameness,
it impacts on the entire makeup
of the animal.
Scientists have determined that
adrenalin,
the fight or flight hormone, and
melanin, the skin and fur
pigment,
are chemically connected, so
they change together,
as are the neurotransmitters
dopamine and noradrenaline which
control behaviors.
Affect one system, and there is
a domino effect from color to behaviors.
Koppenja's scavenging wolves
may have undergone a similar
transformation.
When all of a sudden
Belyaev's experiments...
It changed the way a lot
of us began to think about dogs.
People talked about...
Why did people select dogs to
have this coat color or
that coat color and so on?
Why did people select dogs to
bark?
And then all of a sudden we
realized those were a bunch of
really silly questions,
because we could get all of that
just by selecting for tameness.
Belyaev created foxes that
looked and behaved like dogs.
His experiment suggested that
the transformation of the wild
wolf into the dog could have
happened in the blink of an
evolutionary eye.
The stage was set for the
development of the dog
into the incredible
variety we have today.