Artificial Selection: Specific Overall Trait

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Throughout the history of evolution there have been many different methods and ideologies that have affected the gene pools and phenotypes of species, one of those being "Artificial Selection". Artificial Selection is when humans breed animals of the same species together to create a specific overall trait. (Wikipedia, Learner.org, 2010) A great example of artificial selection is the history of dog breeding. Throughout history humans have bred dogs to further develop more ideal physical and behavioral characteristics, and through it we achieved this wide range of different domesticated dog breeds that are very different from their ancestors, both physically and behavioral.

There are many theories obtaining to how dog breeding began. One of the most popular ones being that humans would rescue orphaned wolf puppies and nurse them back to health. As the puppies got nursed back to heath, they would then grow accustomed to living with humans. From there humans would use them for hunting companions, pest control and “guard dogs”. (Dogtime, 2009) Eventually humans would see that certain individuals were better for certain tasks than others. For instance one individual that was a very fast runner, but rarely barked made for a good hunting companion. However, another that wasn't good at running, but would bark at strangers made for a good guard dog. People would see these characteristics and would specifically breed individuals to concentrate certain traits, Such as breeding two dark-haired wolves to get dark-haired offspring, or two large and intimidating wolves to get large intimidating offspring. With these specific breeds being created, the offspring of the various pairings would either have very similar characteristics between one a...

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...helped widen the gene pool within the species. Through it we not only made domesticated dog breeds very different from their ancestors both physically and behavioral, but also within all the different breeds. It gave the species diversity that it never would have created on its own naturally in the wild.

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