俄罗斯著名的狐狸驯化研究可能有几个关键的缺陷

俄罗斯著名的狐狸驯化研究可能有几个关键的缺陷

In 1959, the Soviet zoologist Dmitry Belyaev began selectively breeding silver foxes. Those least afraid of people were chosen to reproduce. His goal was to simulate the process that turned fierce ancient wolves into the dogs now known as our best friends.

1959年，苏联动物学家德米特里·别列耶夫开始有选择地培育银狐。那些最不怕人的人被选择去繁衍后代。他的目标是模拟把凶猛的古代狼变成现在我们最好的朋友的狗的过程。

The experiment worked, famously well. In 10 generations, Belyaev's lineage of foxes became tame, seeking attention from people and wagging their tails when scientists approached.

这个实验非常成功。经过10代之后，Belyaev的狐狸家族变得温顺了，他们寻求人们的注意，当科学家靠近时，他们会摇尾巴。

But this wasn't the only way the foxes changed. In 1979, Belyaev noted that some of the foxes had begun to look different, developing curly tails, spotting on their coats and floppy, puppy-like ears.

但这并不是狐狸改变的唯一方式。1979年，Belyaev注意到一些狐狸开始看起来不同了，它们长出了卷曲的尾巴，皮毛上有斑点，耳朵耷拉着，像小狗一样。

Later, other scientists began noticing some of these same traits in other domesticated species - pigs and goats, birds and fish - which seemed to point to a common genetic path that animals take as they change from wild to tame to domesticated.

后来，其他科学家开始注意到其他家养物种——猪、山羊、鸟和鱼——也有一些相同的特征，这些特征似乎指向了动物从野生到驯养再到驯化的共同遗传路径。

This tantalizing notion, now known as domestication syndrome, was first put forward by Charles Darwin, and it has become integral to our understanding of how animal domestication works. But in a new paper, some scientists have challenged its accuracy - and, along the way, common beliefs about what domestication means.

这个诱人的概念，现在被称为驯养综合症，是由查尔斯·达尔文首先提出的，它已经成为我们理解动物驯养是如何运作的不可或缺的一部分。但在一篇新发表的论文中，一些科学家对其准确性提出了质疑，同时也对驯化的普遍意义提出了质疑。

The authors of the paper do not doubt that Belyaev was able to breed tamer foxes. But the Russian experiment fell short of proving the existence of domestication syndrome, they argue, because Belyaev's first foxes were far from wild, and there's no proof certain physical features are common to domesticated species.

这篇论文的作者并不怀疑Belyaev能够培育出温顺的狐狸。但他们认为，俄罗斯的实验未能证明驯化综合症的存在，因为Belyaev的第一批狐狸远离野生环境，也没有证据表明某些物理特征是驯化物种所共有的。

The common story line is that when you select on tameness in an animal species, a whole suite of other traits change in a predictable way, said Elinor Karlsson, a genomic scientist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and senior author on the study. "And we just couldn't find convincing evidence for that."

“通常的情况是，当你选择一个动物物种的驯养性时，一整套其他特征会以一种可预见的方式改变，”马萨诸塞大学医学院(University of Massachusetts Medical School)的基因组科学家、该研究的资深作者埃莉诺·卡尔森(Elinor Karlsson)说。“我们只是找不到令人信服的证据。”

A major problem is that Belyaev started with foxes that weren't wild, said Kathryn Lord, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and lead author of the paper, published Tuesday in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. Genetic testing indicated they originated in eastern Canada, probably at a fur farm on Prince Edward Island, which means the animals were already on the path toward domestication.

马萨诸塞大学医学院(University of Massachusetts Medical School)进化生物学家洛德(Kathryn Lord)说，一个主要的问题是，Belyaev一开始用的狐狸不是野生的。洛德是这篇论文的第一作者，论文周二发表在《生态与进化趋势》(Trends in Ecology and Evolution)杂志上。基因测试表明，它们起源于加拿大东部，可能在爱德华王子岛的一个毛皮农场，这意味着这些动物已经走上了驯化的道路。

There's also evidence that Canadian fur farmers were seeking to produce unusual pelt colors, including with white spotting, which might fetch higher prices. So some of the traits held up by Belyaev as evidence of the domestication syndrome may already have been present in his first batch of foxes.

也有证据表明，加拿大的毛皮养殖者正在寻求生产不寻常的毛皮颜色，包括白色斑点，这可能会卖到更高的价格。因此，Belyaev提出的一些作为驯化综合症证据的特征可能已经在他的第一批狐狸中出现了。

And those foxes' tendency to produce white spots likely would have become greater when they arrived in Russia, because Belyaev started his experiment with a rather small population of 130 animals, Karlsson said.

Karlsson说，这些狐狸到达俄罗斯后，可能会产生更多的白斑，因为Belyaev的实验开始时只有130只动物。

You can get very rapid changes in the frequency or the prevalence of a trait without having done a whole lot of work, just by making the population really, really small, she said.

她说:“你不需要做大量的工作，就可以让一个特征的频率或流行度发生非常迅速的变化，只需要让这个群体变得非常非常小。”

The other wrinkle is that evidence for the suite of physical traits long said to be shared by dogs, goats, rabbits and other domesticated species is thin, the authors say.

作者说，另一个问题是，长期以来被认为是狗、山羊、兔子和其他家养物种共有的一系列生理特征的证据很少。

For instance, it's commonly said that domesticated animals have curlier, more upright tails - the difference between a Siberian husky's and a gray wolf's. But Lord and her colleagues found no conclusive evidence that domesticated dogs hold their tails differently from wolves, foxes or other wild canids. They also found little documentation of these traits for other animals.

例如，人们常说家养动物的尾巴更卷曲、更直立——这就是西伯利亚哈士奇和灰狼的区别。但是洛德和她的同事们没有找到确凿的证据证明家犬的尾巴与狼、狐狸或其他野狗不同。他们还发现，关于其他动物这些特征的记录也很少。

None of this matters much to how most of us relate to our dogs and cats (or pigs and goats). But the challenge to common wisdom about how those animals came to be has caused waves in the community of domestication scholars - and gotten a mixed reception.

这些都与我们大多数人如何与我们的狗和猫(或猪和山羊)相处无关。但是，对于这些动物是如何进化而来的常识的挑战，已经在驯养学者的圈子里引起了波澜，并得到了褒贬不一的评价。

The fox experiment is the most celebrated one in studies of domestication, yet details of it have never been fully published or explained, much less critically assessed, said Marcelo Sánchez-Villagra, a paleobiologist at the University of Zurich who has studied domestication syndrome. "This paper to me shows that new, better designed experiments on domestication - of several kinds of animals - are needed to advance the field forward."

“狐狸实验是驯养研究中最著名的一个，但它的细节从未被完全公布或解释，更没有经过严格的评估，”研究驯养综合症的苏黎世大学(University of Zurich)古生物学家马塞洛桑切斯-维拉格拉(Marcelo Sanchez-Villagra)说。“对我来说，这篇论文表明，要推动这一领域向前发展，需要对几种动物的驯化进行新的、设计更好的实验。”