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A comment on Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be smaller and less agressive.

Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by TechnicalVault on Monday December 15, 2025 @11:10AM (#46276371)
The selective pressure of a .338 Winchester Magnum, is not to be underestimated.

Funny thing is something similar occurs in lab mice. Where a technician is selecting a mouse for cull the more aggressive mice are more likely to be the ones selected. Problem mice who kill their littermates can ruin experiments.

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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by attila-lendvai on Saturday December 20, 2025 @07:13PM (#46340990)
same with russian fox fur breeders. i don't remember the numbers, but after a surprisingly small number of generations the foxes turned into cat-like pets.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by pfdietz on Saturday December 20, 2025 @07:20PM (#46341037)
Yes, that's a quite famous experiment, and still ongoing. Similar effects of "domestication syndrome" have recently been reported in wild urban foxes and raccoons.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by tokai on Saturday December 20, 2025 @08:30PM (#46341408)
Remember reading something about humans themselves show the signs of domestication syndrome.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by nkrisc on Saturday December 20, 2025 @08:35PM (#46341437)
Not in the literal sense (which would semantically impossible), but we have domesticated ourselves with the advent of farming and the domestication of crop plants. We fundamentally changed our own lifestyle into an agricultural one, the same we changed lifestyle of several large mammal species to co-exist with us in that agricultural lifestyle. So perhaps in some sense, maybe we actually did literally domesticated ourselves.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by antihipocrat on Saturday December 20, 2025 @09:29PM (#46341694)
Wheat, barley and similar plant life have done pretty well for themselves, perhaps they domesticated us?
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by lisper on Sunday December 21, 2025 @12:19AM (#46342435)
A chicken is an egg’s way of making more eggs.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by mjanx123 on Sunday December 21, 2025 @12:52AM (#46342576)
The markers of domestication in modern humans long predate the farming. 'Human' was the first animal available for domestication. There is a distinction between the domestication as set of changes in the organism and the 'applied' domestication in farming. In the applied sense, the humans on the top of the hierarchy do actually farm the humans below them.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by verisimi on Sunday December 21, 2025 @02:29AM (#46342955)
> Not in the literal sense (which would semantically impossible)

Why is it impossible the humans are not domesticated? Are you making a point about language?

I think this is certainly true. People in cities, where there are high amounts of people around act differently when they are in a small village or in nature with fewer or no people around.

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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by BurningFrog on Saturday December 20, 2025 @11:38PM (#46342293)
Executing murderers will change the population over a few centuries.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by startupsfail on Sunday December 21, 2025 @12:25AM (#46342464)
Yes, executioners do proliferate this way. They tend to run out of murderers quickly though, then use any other excuses to execute.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by Earw0rm on Sunday December 21, 2025 @04:25AM (#46343447)
Only if they haven't yet reproduced.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by pfdietz on Sunday December 21, 2025 @03:41PM (#46348225)
I doubt it. The fraction of population that is murderers is quite small.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by BurningFrog on Sunday December 21, 2025 @05:01PM (#46348998)
If so, you don't have to execute a lot of them to affect the murder rates!
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by pfdietz on Monday December 22, 2025 @01:05AM (#46351779)
The question wasn't changing the murder rate now, but changing "the population over a few centuries". If it doesn't change the population genetics significantly it won't do that.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by BurningFrog on Monday December 22, 2025 @01:44PM (#46357261)
If 1% of men are potential murderers, and we execute 10% of them in each generation, it will have huge a impact on the murder rate over a few centuries, even though not a lot of people got executed, and the overall genetics of the population hasn't changed much.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by pfdietz on Monday December 22, 2025 @04:54PM (#46359597)
Well, no, that presumes "murderosity" is due to rare genes concentrated in murderers, not unfortunate combinations of genes widely spread in the population. Experience with "disease genes" has been they mostly of the latter type, with each gene having a minor effect.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by BurningFrog on Monday December 22, 2025 @05:11PM (#46359760)
The rate of the effect is probably unknowable. I think we agree that it exists.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by devilbunny on Sunday December 21, 2025 @07:41PM (#46350153)
It is now. OTOH I have read that an estimated 1/4 of male chimpanzees die at the hands of other chimps (whether murder or war). So it’s not implausible.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by dyauspitr on Saturday December 20, 2025 @09:11PM (#46341629)
Tails curled, ears drooped and they became mostly white.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by jojobas on Sunday December 21, 2025 @12:14AM (#46342420)
It wasn't for fur, they ran a long-term selective breeding experiment just to see if they can pull it off.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by rendaw on Saturday December 20, 2025 @10:32PM (#46342006)
Do lab mice breed after selection for experiments?
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by 0_____0 on Saturday December 20, 2025 @11:40PM (#46342303)
What portion of lab mice are from genetically stable inbred lines? I assumed most of them were from those lines due to their predictable characteristics. C57BL/6 being predictably kind of bitey for example
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by asdff on Sunday December 21, 2025 @12:32AM (#46342485)
What is interesting is it is happening with urban racoons too. I'm not sure what the selective pressure might be for smaller snouts. I don't think racoons are being killed like a dangerous bear might. I'd assume if any are being actively fed for looking cute it is very few of them, and those doing the feeding wouldn't be selective about it.

My best guess is that the short snout trait is in linkage with something else that is actually what is being selected upon. At least for racoons.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raccoons-are-show...

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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by raverbashing on Sunday December 21, 2025 @04:45AM (#46343571)
One evolutionary pressure that exists in city raccoons is being run over by cars. Others might be access to food, which cute (and less aggressive) raccoons might have an easier time with
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by setopt on Sunday December 21, 2025 @08:58AM (#46344884)
My guess would be a linkage with something else as you say. Look for example at the Russian domestication of silver foxes which was done very deliberately, and bred for less aggressiveness, yet it caused physical changes in appearance like dog-like ears and tails: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by andai on Sunday December 21, 2025 @05:43AM (#46343867)
I heard the same process has been running on humans for the last few millennia. Apparently 2% of the population was executed every year, wherein presumably the most aggressive and independently-minded individuals are overrepresented.

Something something autodomestication...

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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by HPsquared on Sunday December 21, 2025 @07:38AM (#46344414)
Every year, or every generation? I could believe 2% per generation.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by lotsofpulp on Sunday December 21, 2025 @06:18AM (#46344015)
Wouldn’t the ones doing the executing be the most aggressive?
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by lm28469 on Sunday December 21, 2025 @06:35AM (#46344090)
It's just a job, and the decision is backed by justice.

The guy who kills a family for fun is more aggressive than the guy who execute him. I'm not even sure how you could get to any other conclusion

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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by lotsofpulp on Sunday December 21, 2025 @07:25AM (#46344332)
In that scenario, the guy who kills a family is also an executioner. But in the context of a world where 2% of the population is executed every year, presumably that is one without much of a justice system, and more of a dictatorship (where the dictator and their underlings are pretty aggressive).

Edit: I think "most aggressive and independently-minded individuals" needs to be defined further, because, obviously, a human without a tribe isn't going to survive long, but also no tribe wants an unpredictable wildcard. So one can be aggressive, with long term strategic thinking, but also not impulsive so as to become persona non grata.

An aggressive, long term thinking individual (or group) can cull other "aggressive and independently-minded individuals" so they don't develop into threats.

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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by lm28469 on Sunday December 21, 2025 @09:31AM (#46345080)
> the guy who kills a family is also an executioner

Quite literally not... "executioner: an official who effects a sentence of capital punishment on a condemned person". An executioner is someone who is legally allowed to give death as a consequence of a judicial decision, not simply someone who kills.

Words have meaning an homicide isn't a murder, a murder isn't an execution, &c.

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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by Ray20 on Sunday December 21, 2025 @06:39AM (#46344106)
No, they are not. I think, on average, those who execute are much less aggressive than those who are executed.
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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by lotsofpulp on Sunday December 21, 2025 @07:33AM (#46344380)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_mortality...

Even in warring countries, or countries without much rule of law, death rates (from all causes) is ~1.1%. Let's say good data is not available, and the real figure is double or triple that number.

An annual death rate of 2% just from executions would be in a society with a super aggressive dictator (or faction, I guess).

For more context, annual WW2 death rates over 5 or 6 years were not as high as 2% per year. Only Poland seems to have been higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

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Re:Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be sma... by II2II on Sunday December 21, 2025 @08:19AM (#46344638)
I look at aggression as an emotional state, rather than the capacity for violence. Consider the army. Soldiers are expected to commit violent acts on enemy soldiers, yet they are also expected to maintain emotional control. They are typically expected to avoid killing civilians. They are certainly expected to avoid killing friendly targets. Clearly they have a capacity to commit violence and I suppose most people would say there is a need for aggression because of that. On the other hand, they are not aggressive in the sense of random acts of violence (as would be the case of a bear or a raccoon attacking a bystander).
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