Raffaela Lesch

Smaller brains also seems to be one that pops up quite a lot.

But this combination of traits can show up in all domesticated animals.

And we're still trying to figure out how exactly that works.

So the most popular hypothesis that we have at the moment is that any domesticated animal had to undergo a selection for tameness, so to say.

So animals that enter that domestication pathway...

would have to adapt to living in close proximity to humans.

And that adaptation requires them to basically be somewhat tolerant and friendly towards humans.

Because if you're not nice around humans, you usually don't live a very long life.

You will become food.

Yeah, exactly.

You will become food or a rug or something like that.

So you have a fairly strong selection pressure for friendly individuals or tolerant individuals.

And over many, many generations, that selection for tameness, according to that hypothesis, changes the migration and proliferation of neural crest cells.

And these cells are important.

For example, if you have fewer of those cells, you might have organ systems that rely on those develop in a slight deficiency.

So for example, the craniofacial skeleton might be receiving fewer cells, which could explain that shorter snout.

So that's kind of like the general idea that we have here.

explaining how we get from a wild animal to that domestication syndrome.

It is the most popular hypothesis we have.

Personally, I think it's a really good hypothesis but we also don't fully agree that that is it yet.