A few days ago there was some discussion about the Pakistani Gene. I had mentioned about the silver fox experiment. I ran into another article on Natl Geo. Its really interesting to say the least..
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/ ... tliff-text
Many interesting things. To summarize tho Belyaev and his group's experiments involve breeding silver foxes which havent been domesticated yet. One group they selectively breed the increasingly friendly kind and another group, the wild kind. The differences are stark - in terms of behavior, brains and looks..
First a description of the friendly SDRE kind..
Mavrik, the object of Trut's attention, is about the size of a Shetland sheepdog, with chestnut orange fur and a white bib down his front. He plays his designated role in turn: wagging his tail, rolling on his back, panting eagerly in anticipation of attention. In adjacent cages lining either side of the narrow, open-sided shed, dozens of canids do the same, yelping and clamoring in an explosion of fur and unbridled excitement. "As you can see," Trut says above the din, "all of them want human contact." Today, however, Mavrik is the lucky recipient. Trut reaches in and scoops him up, then hands him over to me. Cradled in my arms, gently jawing my hand in his mouth, he's as docile as any lapdog.
And for contrast the wild TFTA kind..
So in a mirror image of the friendly foxes, the kits in the aggressive population are rated according to the hostility of their behavior. Only the most aggressive are bred for the next generation. Here are the evil twins of the tail-wagging Mavrik, straight out of a B-grade horror film: hissing, baring their teeth, snapping at the front of their cages when any human approaches.
Reg how it might relate to humans..
In 2003 a young researcher at Duke University named Brian Hare traveled out to Novosibirsk. Hare is known for his work cataloging the unique behaviors of dogs and wolves, showing the ways in which dogs have evolved to follow human cues like pointing and eye movements. When he conducted similar tests on fox kits in Siberia, he found that they did just as well as puppies of the same age. The results, while preliminary, suggest that selecting against fear and aggression—what Hare calls "emotional reactivity"—has created foxes that are not just tame but that also have the doglike ability to engage with humans using their social cues.
"They didn't select for a smarter fox but for a nice fox," says Hare. "But they ended up getting a smart fox." This research also has implications for the origins of human social behavior. "Are we domesticated in the sense of dogs? No. But I am comfortable saying that the first thing that has to happen to get a human from an apelike ancestor is a substantial increase in tolerance toward one another. There had to be a change in our social system."
IOW there is a good possibility of a Paki phenotype.
This is called cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. If Pakis don't protect their Durand line - Pashtunistan gets easier to establish.
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