Today I was listening to The State of Things on my local public radio station. The segment aired was about how animals are domesticated and become pets and what work the Humane Society is doing with the knowledge thereof. The process of domestication was explained and one experiment lasting over 50 years was that of a Russian scientist Dmitry Belyaev. You can read all about animal domestication in this National Geographic article.
When an animal is domesticated, there features change. They become cuter with floppy ears and different coloration. This is because the genes that affect those traits are the ones triggered when an animal is domesticated. Domestication comes when the population changes social aspects of itself like communication. There is a decrease in testosterone and a rise in cortisol as the body reacts differently to the stress of new social interaction. Even more interesting is that species of some animals have self-domesticated. Read this article about Bonobos which look like chimpanzees but act much different. This leads me with to interesting theory.
Humans are fundamentally animals, and I'm sure there have been some self-domestication times in human history. As with the bonobos, tight social bonds are being formed Could it be that with our new ways of communicating and relating to one another we have begun a new evolution of domesticating ourselves? And maybe it is why male evangelical, complementarian leaders have been saying the church is feminizing. With more communication and a lowering of testosterone, I would tend to agree. But that also means that society is feminizing as a whole.
Is that such a bad thing? If it leads to a more peaceful, altruistic society, I wouldn't think so. But the process is a work in progress and evolutionary trends aren't known for many millions of years.
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