Actually TFA says nothing of the sort, but whatever. Welcome to Fark, blah bleh.

theorellior: People like to think of aggression and violence accomplishing things, but I think the human experiment provides a modification of this concept. First you learn to cooperate and band together, and then you get violent and aggressive. You can't be properly nasty without being nice.

Shut up, queer.

I've always wanted to post this and now I have my chance:

wat

/what article?

stage virility contests involving non-confrontational stick-dragging


Could be the next FOX reality show.

huh?

They'll be nice to you, but they'll still rip your face off if the fancy strikes them.
Wild animals are wild animals.

I wonder what the city fathers of Hiroshima would say about that

dragonchild: Actually TFA says nothing of the sort, but whatever. Welcome to Fark, blah bleh.

"And whereas a resource-limited environment likely made female alliances rare, as they are in modern chimpanzees, reduced competition would have allowed females to become friends. No longer would males intimidate them and force them into sex. Once reproduction was no longer traumatic, they could afford to be fertile more often, which in turn reduced competition between males."

Get a job, you commy bastard!


Like, chill out, man. Enjoy the peace and love.

Bonoblow me

So... chimps are like Republicans and bonobos are dirty hippies?

HotIgneous Intruder: huh?

They'll be nice to you, but they'll still rip your face off if the fancy strikes them.


It's chimps that might do that, not Bonobos, which the article is mostly talking about.

Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!

For those who didn't read the article--long story short, bonobos seem to be undergoing a domestication-like process WITHOUT being domesticated by humans--they seem to be "self-domesticating", that is, showing some of the neurological and even a few of the physical changes that are associated with domestication of animals we're more familiar with. In the case of bonobos, it seems there may have been a natural (and non-human) selection for "the nice ones".

(Basically there are neurological changes and hormonal changes linked to domestication that lead to critters being less aggressive, and these in turn have side effects like the critters in question looking more juvenile, engaging in more juvenile behaviour compared to the parent species, and even the appearance of coat changes.)

This isn't such a weird concept, either--dogs (in their early stages of domestication) may have self-domesticated, cats are fairly well proven to have self-domesticated at first, and the article also notes some evidence that white-tailed deer may be in this process in the northeast US--complete with spotty coats among the non-human-phobic deer (a neotenous, or "juvenile", trait.)

And yes, the article does mention the famous "dog-fox" experiment (in which Russian fur farmers were originally trying for docile silver foxes who wouldn't nip the hell out of them; they got placid and playful foxes...who had floppy ears and spotted coats, just like their big canid cousins). The experiment's been ongoing over 50 years and the first signs of domestication happened in about five generations...showing it doesn't take long to turn a fox, or a wolf, into a dog if proper selection for "the nice ones" takes place.

Even more fun--Homo sapiens has a lot of neotenous traits compared to other hominids, and there is some evidence to suggest that--like bonobos--we may have self-selected in a similar manner, and had neotenous traits follow...

valar_morghulis:
theorellior: People like to think of aggression and violence accomplishing things, but I think the human experiment provides a modification of this concept. First you learn to cooperate and band together, and then you get violent and aggressive. You can't be properly nasty without being nice.

Shut up, queer.

Funny you should say that... I've heard a hypothesis that homosexuality might be a side-effect of a genetic trend allowing males/females to be less competitive and more amiable with their own sex, thus facilitating social cooperation. Ie. for most, the effect is that you like your own sex more than your ancestors did, but for some, you really like your own sex, more than your ancestors did.

This is probably both partly true, and impossible to confirm scientifically.

Interesting article. Has there been anything similar observed in non-mammals?

/ besides birds, I guess.

theorellior: People like to think of aggression and violence accomplishing things, but I think the human experiment provides a modification of this concept. First you learn to cooperate and band together, and then you get violent and aggressive. You can't be properly nasty without being nice.

A little bit of the old Ludwig Van before the right horrorshow in-out-in-out, eh?

Hudson: Is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or another bughunt?
Gorman: All we know is that there's still no contact with the colony, and that a xenomorph may be involved.
Frost: Excuse me sir, a-a what?
Gorman: A xenomorph.
Hicks: It's a bughunt.

Magorn: Great Porn Dragon: For those who didn't read the article--long story short, bonobos seem to be undergoing a domestication-like process WITHOUT being domesticated by humans--they seem to be "self-domesticating", that is, showing some of the neurological and even a few of the physical changes that are associated with domestication of animals we're more familiar with. In the case of bonobos, it seems there may have been a natural (and non-human) selection for "the nice ones".

(Basically there are neurological changes and hormonal changes linked to domestication that lead to critters being less aggressive, and these in turn have side effects like the critters in question looking more juvenile, engaging in more juvenile behaviour compared to the parent species, and even the appearance of coat changes.)

This isn't such a weird concept, either--dogs (in their early stages of domestication) may have self-domesticated, cats are fairly well proven to have self-domesticated at first, and the article also notes some evidence that white-tailed deer may be in this process in the northeast US--complete with spotty coats among the non-human-phobic deer (a neotenous, or "juvenile", trait.)

And yes, the article does mention the famous "dog-fox" experiment (in which Russian fur farmers were originally trying for docile silver foxes who wouldn't nip the hell out of them; they got placid and playful foxes...who had floppy ears and spotted coats, just like their big canid cousins). The experiment's been ongoing over 50 years and the first signs of domestication happened in about five generations...showing it doesn't take long to turn a fox, or a wolf, into a dog if proper selection for "the nice ones" takes place.

Even more fun--Homo sapiens has a lot of neotenous traits compared to other hominids, and there is some evidence to suggest that--like bonobos--we may have self-selected in a similar manner, and had neotenous traits follow...

This has long been a philosophical question of ...

Actually, if anything, recent evidence shows we might well have evolved from something sort of "in between"...probably the closest fossil great ape to the Last Common Ancestor of humans, chimps and bonobos is Ardipithecus (which already shows some facial neotenous traits common to the "human branch" of the human/chimp/bonobo clade, and also shows a "bipedal pelvis" whilst still having semi-opposable big toes) which seems to be a critter from shortly after we split from the "chimp lineage". At least based on the facial structure (that shows a reduction of canines and doesn't show the exaggerated canines common in chimpanzees) of Ardi, it's entirely possible that we could have gone closer to the "bonobo path" earlier, or it could be that chimps pretty much grew to be exceptionally aggressive apes.

Unfortunately, we don't have a good fossil record for chimpanzees and proto-chimps, and the fossil record for the great apes (save for those who lived in savannahs or bamboo forests--like early hominids, or Gigantopithecus aka the Chinese orangutan-cousin that lived rather like a pongid gorilla) is pretty abysmal--humans actually have the most complete fossil record of the great apes, and we're still trying to piece things together on apes before the Ardipithecus-chimpanzee split.

In the case of chimps and bonobos, the ancestor species does still exist (bonobos split from chimps relatively recently--about a million years ago, about the time that Homo may have been starting to come into its own separately from australopithecines) so it's easier to trace the neotenous characteristics in bonobos.

To really answer the question re humans, though, we're probably going to need to find a lot better fossil remains both before and at the time of the human-chimp split--and we also need to find some actual decent "chimpanzee lineage" fossils and pre-fossil remains.

lisarenee3505: Hudson: Is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or another bughunt?
Gorman: All we know is that there's still no contact with the colony, and that a xenomorph may be involved.
Frost: Excuse me sir, a-a what?
Gorman: A xenomorph.
Hicks: It's a bughunt.

[images.wikia.com image 280x244]

And damn you, now I'm picturing what would happen if Aliens xenomorphs have something akin to the "domestication syndrome" in mammals :D

As an aside--someone asked if something similar happens with birds. Probably the closest evidence we do have of anything akin to a "domestication syndrome" in birds is the appearance of variant feather patterns and colourations in pigeons and chickens and domesticated waterfowl; generally, though, avian livestock has been domesticated for purposes of production (and in the case of pigeons, their homing abilities) rather than for tractability...about the only avians I know of that have been specifically bred to be nice have been homing pigeons.

This is further complicated by the fact that--comparatively speaking--only about seven species of birds have been domesticated in the same sense that we have domesticated cattle, dogs, cats, horses, goats, sheep, llamas, camels, rats, hamsters, etc. etc. etc. These are chickens (domesticated from jungle fowl, possible partial self-domestication), ducks (probable partial self-domestication), geese (probable partial domestication), turkeys (probable self-domestication), guinea fowl (likely self-domestication, similar to that of turkeys), fancy doves (domesticated from, if memory serves me right, mourning doves) and fancy pigeons (domesticated from wild populations of Rock Dove--yes, the famous "flying rats" of any downtown area are actually ginormous doves). With the sole exception of pigeons--who were also domesticated for homing ability and the ability to send messages (including TCP/IP--yes, an actual RFC exists for sending TCP/IP via homing pigeon!)--pretty much all extant domesticated birds were domesticated for purposes of meat and/or eggs.

Most of the variant feather colours in chickens and ducks have come about as a sort of "side effect" that was seen as attractive-looking; pretty much only chickens, ducks, fancy doves, and fancy pigeons have been really subject to the selective breeding that domestic mammal breeds have been subject to. Even the domestic turkey, which is so changed from its wild ancestor as to have not only arguably speciated but which has issues in breeding and is well-nigh infamous for its...intellectual disability (especially in comparison with wild turkeys!) pretty much got that way via selective breeding for breast meat size, not because they tried to mate the nice turkeys together.

Most pet birds are historically from wild-captured populations, and it's really been only within the past fifty to a hundred years or so that even psittacine breeding (much less that of the finches like zebra finches and canaries) has become common. Especially with the long lives of psittacines (your parrots and parakeets/budgies and cocatiels and macaws) it's arguable that there hasn't been enough time and/or generations for domestication to occur, and if there's been selection it's been towards "wild type"; canaries and parakeets/budgies probably have the best claims for recent domestication.

Even the more recent attempts at domestication of ratites (ostriches and emus for the most part--rheas are considered rather ill-tempered and intractible) for meat, egg and feather production haven't shown signs of "domestication syndrome"--not even in emus, where attempts to "breed the nice ones" HAVE been taking place.

There are some avians that have shown signs of being de facto self-domesticated (thinking specifically here of human-acclimated Canada geese and Mallard ducks), but there don't seem to be the changes in personality or changes in feather colouration/patterns that exist in mammalian self-domestication; Canada geese that live in heavy human populations are just as mean bastards as their cousins living on a lake in Bumfark, Manitoba--they've just figured out people can't hunt them in cities and that fast food restaurants can provide a steady source of food.

Basically, long story short--it's likely that "domestication syndrome" in avians (which are basically dinosaurian bats from a lineage that is more related to crocodiles than mammals) doesn't occur in the same way it does with mammals--then again, our lineage (and the lineage of mammals) split from the lineage of dinosaurs (including yummy, yummy dinosaurs like chickens and ducks) LONG ago--about some 340-odd million years ago, back when the coal beds were forming in the Appalachians and all tetrapods looked like mudpuppies from hell to a greater or lesser extent. (T. rex is a whippersnapper in comparison. :D) I'd be actually shocked if--with that long of separation--if avians did have a "domestication syndrome"--their neocortex and higher cranial (and hormonal) systems evolved differently than ours did.

theorellior: People like to think of aggression and violence accomplishing things, but I think the human experiment provides a modification of this concept. First you learn to cooperate and band together, and then you get violent and aggressive. You can't be properly nasty without being nice.

Does that mean you have to be Kind to be cruel in the right measure?
Kind to be cruel - it's a kind of a rule.
Kind to be cruel - makes you successful.
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAABYyyyyyy... you've gotta be Kind to be Cruel.