Genetics could instill "correct thinking".

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Lion tamers step aside: beasts could be tamed through genes

Sci­en­tists say they have learn­ed where genes re­spon­si­ble for tame­ness lie on the rat ge­nome.

The find­ing may lead to new breed­ing strate­gies to pro­duce tame an­i­mals by pass­ing spe­cif­ic genes in­to new genera­t­ions—and to the tam­ing of hith­er­to “un­tame­a­ble” spe­cies, ac­cord­ing to the re­search­ers.

“I hope our study will ul­ti­mately lead to a de­tailed un­der­stand­ing of the ge­net­ics and bi­ol­o­gy of tame­ness,” said Frank Al­bert, a sci­ent­ist with the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Ev­o­lu­tion­ary An­thro­po­l­ogy in Ger­ma­ny and first au­thor of the re­search re­port.

“Maybe we’ll then be able to do­mes­ti­cate a few of those spe­cies where hu­mans have his­tor­ic­ally not been suc­cess­ful like the wild Af­ri­can Buf­fa­lo.”

The stu­dy, pub­lished in the June is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Ge­net­ics, has roots dat­ing back to 1972 when re­search­ers in No­vo­si­birsk, in what is now Rus­sia, caught a large group of rats in the woods around the city. The sci­ent­ists then di­vid­ed the ro­dents in­to two groups. The first in­clud­ed the most “friend­ly” rats – those that weren’t ag­gres­sive to­ward peo­ple. The sec­ond group in­clud­ed the most ag­gres­sive rats – those that screamed, at­tacked and bit hu­mans.

Since then, these rats have been bred with one an­oth­er. Now, the two groups of rats act very dif­fer­ently to­ward peo­ple. The tame rats tol­er­ate be­ing touched and pick­ed up, and nev­er at­tack. The ag­gres­sive rats scream, run away, or at­tack and bite.

For the stu­dy, the sci­ent­ists mat­ed the tame with the ag­gres­sive rats and iden­ti­fied re­gions in the rat ge­nome that make a rat tam­er or more ag­gres­sive.

“For thou­sands of years, hu­mans have do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals,” said Mark John­ston, editor-in-chief of Ge­net­ics. “All dur­ing this time, much folk­lore and my­thol­o­gy has sur­rounded the pro­cess. But of course ge­net­ics plays a large role in the pro­cess,” he added. “This re­search pro­vides a sol­id sci­en­tif­ic ex­plana­t­ion of this phe­nom­e­non, and of­fers clues about how ge­nomes can be ma­ni­pu­lated to breed tame an­i­mals of spe­cies once be­lieved to be un­tame­able.”

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090612_tameness.htm

[fozzie 41]

Maybe we could do that with people too

[Peikko 1,575]

No, probably not. It's not like Humans are omniscient and can know what is right for all other species. If you are going to accuse humans of arrogance, this qualifies more than GM.

[Ban Hammer 14,791]

should make it easier to keep a dem president in power.