Scientific American.<\/a><\/p>\n“Trash is really the kickstarter,” she said. “Wherever humans go, there’s trash \u2014 and animals love our trash.”<\/p>\n
But to take advantage of this endless buffet, wildlife must strike a delicate balance: bold enough to root through bins and navigate human environments, yet not so bold as to pose a threat. <\/p>\n
“If you have an animal that lives close to humans, you have to be well-behaved enough,” Lesch said. “That selection pressure is quite intense.”<\/p>\n
The finding, the authors said, is consistent with the “domestication syndrome phenotype”. <\/p>\n
Domestication syndrome – anatomical and morphological changes such as curly tails, floppy ears, depigmentation, smaller brains and reduced facial skeletons – are commonly cited as some of the most salient traits, the study says. <\/p>\n
Those traits are also seen among more common household pets, such as dogs that evolved from wolves.<\/p>\n
The study’s authors also hypothesised that the domestication process is wrongly believed to be initiated by humans, who have captured or selectively bred animals in the past. <\/p>\n
The process might actually begin much earlier than previously thought, they said, notably when animals became habituated to human environments.<\/p>\n
“Only animals with dampened flight (or fight) responses would succeed best,” the authors wrote. “This makes the initial stages of the domestication process a process of pure natural selection.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raccoons may be inching closer to becoming America’s next pet. Affectionately referred to as trash pandas, the masked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-274908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}