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1 " During much of the Paleolithic, reindeer were a primary food source for Eurasians, but judging by the relative scarcity of their representations in cave paintings, they were not as highly respected as aurochs, horses, and bison. They don't seem to have been deemed sacred. By the time domestication commenced, that attitude had changed, as evidenced by the Bronze Age megaliths depicting flying reindeera motif that still figures prominently in the religion of contemporary Siberian tribes such as the Evenki and Eveny. Some believe that Santa's flying reindeer ultimately derive from these myths. I don't, but I have been called Scrooge more than once. "
― Richard C. Francis , Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World
2 " Whenever we came to a rocky escarpment, she and all her sisters would stop, not at all eager for the challenge. But we had camel drivers with sticks accompanying us; they employed the latter to urge the camels up the rocky escarpments, and the camels reluctantly complied. If the camels were reluctant to climb up the rocky escarpments, they were loath to go down them. In fact, I came to surmise, the reason camels were reluctant to go up the rocky escarpments was because they were loath to go down them. Figuring that the only reason a camel would be loath to go down a rocky escarpment would be fear of slipping and falling, I, too, was loath to go down the rocky escarpments. "
3 " Al tempo della sua fondazione non c'era neppure un somaro in tutto il paese; presto però gli Stati Uniti ne furono pieni. Da dove saranno mai vennuti, tutti quei somari?L'Ultimo Mistero dell'Ereditarietàcap. 9 "Asini e Cavalli "
― Richard C. Francis , Epigenetics: The Ultimate Mystery of Inheritance
4 " In a mere 15,000–30,000 years the selection imposed on dogs by their association with humans has caused evolutionary alterations never experienced in the canine family during the previous 40 million years. "
5 " There is another mutation, called radial hypoplasia (RH), or “hamburger feet,” which results in a different form of polydactyly, of a spiraling nature.35 A creative breeder in Texas sought to build on this deformity in constructing a “Twisty cat” breed, in which the spiraling extends to the bones of the forelimb. Twisty cats also have extremely short forelimbs and relatively long hind limbs, which cause them to sit like a squirrel—hence an alternative name, “squitten.” Twisty cats are banned in Europe on humanitarian grounds, but not in the United States; the same is true of the Munchkin. It is time that the United States caught up with the United Kingdom in this regard. The deliberate breeding of skeletally deformed breeds is unconscionable. "
6 " We humans have a penchant for ritualizing our sense of awe -- perhaps to tame it, perhaps to channel it toward another end. "
― Richard C. Francis
7 " There were no black wolves prior to domestication; now they are fairly common, especially in North America—another indication of the importance of hybridization in the evolution of dogs. "
8 " The counsel of caution regarding our ability to establish human mind/brain adaptation goes unheeded by those who call themselves "evolutionary psychologists"; they are not at all chary of claiming to have demonstrated all manner of human cognitive adaptations on what for mainstream evolutionary biology is very weak evidence. But evolutionary psychology was born and nurtured outside of the mainstream of evolutionary biology. It was developed by psychologists who sought a unifying monolithic framework for psychology to replace that of a discredited behaviorism. It is not surprising, therefore, that the "evolution" in evolutionary psychology run exceedingly shallow. For instance, the developmental turn in mainstream evolutionary biology occured before the advent of evolutionary psychology but has never been so much as acknowledged by evolutionary psychologists. Their use of genomic evidence is extremely limited, and their awareness of the increasingly sophisticated methods and tools for genealogical (phylogenetic) reconstructions seems completely absent. In this, evolutionary psychology stands in marked contrast to evolutionary anthropology, for which evo devo, genomics, and genealogical techniques essential for applying the comparative method have become increasingly central. "
9 " The record for polydactyly is 27 toes, set by a Canadian cat. "
10 " (It is noteworthy that the high incidence of male homosexuality among sheep—more than 8 percent4—does not count against them on Judgment Day, and that goats do not benefit from their sexual conventionality). "
11 " This loss of genetic diversity extends to individual breeds, most dramatically in the Holstein. Through artificial insemination, a few bulls are responsible for the vast majority of Holstein pregnancies. Two bulls, a father and son, are responsible for 7 percent of the genomes of the entire American population of Holsteins; genetic diversity be damned. "
