Domestication, And Its Reverberations

Here is a strange blog post, send by John, regarding the domestication of animals, and how it creates a number of secondary effects, including depigmentation.

You can see that all of these domestic animals have large white patches - they’ve lost pigment in their coats in some areas. Why do we care? Well, this is something that is extremely common among domesticated animals, but very rare among wild animals. I hear you saying “but what about zebras, or any other wild animal with white patches?”. What we’re referring to here is slightly different. A zebra will always have that patterning, whereas what we’re looking at here is depigmentation - the loss of color in certain areas in an animal that is “normally” colored.

What else is common among domestic animals but rare in the wild? Well, things like dwarf and giant varieties, floppy ears, and non-seasonal mating. Charles Darwin, in Chapter One of Origin of the Species noted that “not a single domestic animal can be named which has not in some country drooping ears”. A very significant observation when you consider that there is only a single wild animal with drooping ears - the elephant.

Plus, efforts to create a tame fox had the most unexpected side effects: