Belyaev Experiment. The fox breeding experiment is probably the most important a

Belyaev Experiment. The fox breeding experiment is probably the most important addition to evolutionary knowledge of the past century. Not to diminish genetics. But the fact that we can turn a fox into a dog that quickly by selecting for one simple, easily demonstrable trait, and that the cascade effects are identical to those in human domestication, as well as the domestication of all other farm animals, puts an end to the all sorts of pretense about rates of evolution, and dependence upon mutation and adaptation. Instead, we preserve, in our genetic records, multiple potentials that we can express in response to local need. We can select for rates of maturity or the reverse. And by doing so produce the variation in the races. It turns out that civilization requires we select for the very same trait we select for in foxes and wolves. We produce neoteny and its various consequences. Because all our endocrine and cerebro-chemical functions are interdependent.