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Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication

Humans are unique in their sophisticated culture and societal structures, their complex languages, and their extensive tool use. According to the human self-domestication hypothesis, this unique set of traits may be the result of an evolutionary process of self-induced domestication, in which humans...

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Autores principales: Raviv, Limor, Jacobson, Sarah L., Plotnik, Joshua M., Bowman, Jacob, Lynch, Vincent, Benítez-Burraco, Antonio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10104499/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37011191
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2208607120
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author Raviv, Limor
Jacobson, Sarah L.
Plotnik, Joshua M.
Bowman, Jacob
Lynch, Vincent
Benítez-Burraco, Antonio
author_facet Raviv, Limor
Jacobson, Sarah L.
Plotnik, Joshua M.
Bowman, Jacob
Lynch, Vincent
Benítez-Burraco, Antonio
author_sort Raviv, Limor
collection PubMed
description Humans are unique in their sophisticated culture and societal structures, their complex languages, and their extensive tool use. According to the human self-domestication hypothesis, this unique set of traits may be the result of an evolutionary process of self-induced domestication, in which humans evolved to be less aggressive and more cooperative. However, the only other species that has been argued to be self-domesticated besides humans so far is bonobos, resulting in a narrow scope for investigating this theory limited to the primate order. Here, we propose an animal model for studying self-domestication: the elephant. First, we support our hypothesis with an extensive cross-species comparison, which suggests that elephants indeed exhibit many of the features associated with self-domestication (e.g., reduced aggression, increased prosociality, extended juvenile period, increased playfulness, socially regulated cortisol levels, and complex vocal behavior). Next, we present genetic evidence to reinforce our proposal, showing that genes positively selected in elephants are enriched in pathways associated with domestication traits and include several candidate genes previously associated with domestication. We also discuss several explanations for what may have triggered a self-domestication process in the elephant lineage. Our findings support the idea that elephants, like humans and bonobos, may be self-domesticated. Since the most recent common ancestor of humans and elephants is likely the most recent common ancestor of all placental mammals, our findings have important implications for convergent evolution beyond the primate taxa, and constitute an important advance toward understanding how and why self-domestication shaped humans’ unique cultural niche.
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spelling pubmed-101044992023-04-15 Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication Raviv, Limor Jacobson, Sarah L. Plotnik, Joshua M. Bowman, Jacob Lynch, Vincent Benítez-Burraco, Antonio Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences Humans are unique in their sophisticated culture and societal structures, their complex languages, and their extensive tool use. According to the human self-domestication hypothesis, this unique set of traits may be the result of an evolutionary process of self-induced domestication, in which humans evolved to be less aggressive and more cooperative. However, the only other species that has been argued to be self-domesticated besides humans so far is bonobos, resulting in a narrow scope for investigating this theory limited to the primate order. Here, we propose an animal model for studying self-domestication: the elephant. First, we support our hypothesis with an extensive cross-species comparison, which suggests that elephants indeed exhibit many of the features associated with self-domestication (e.g., reduced aggression, increased prosociality, extended juvenile period, increased playfulness, socially regulated cortisol levels, and complex vocal behavior). Next, we present genetic evidence to reinforce our proposal, showing that genes positively selected in elephants are enriched in pathways associated with domestication traits and include several candidate genes previously associated with domestication. We also discuss several explanations for what may have triggered a self-domestication process in the elephant lineage. Our findings support the idea that elephants, like humans and bonobos, may be self-domesticated. Since the most recent common ancestor of humans and elephants is likely the most recent common ancestor of all placental mammals, our findings have important implications for convergent evolution beyond the primate taxa, and constitute an important advance toward understanding how and why self-domestication shaped humans’ unique cultural niche. National Academy of Sciences 2023-04-03 2023-04-11 /pmc/articles/PMC10104499/ /pubmed/37011191 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2208607120 Text en Copyright © 2023 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Biological Sciences
Raviv, Limor
Jacobson, Sarah L.
Plotnik, Joshua M.
Bowman, Jacob
Lynch, Vincent
Benítez-Burraco, Antonio
Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication
title Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication
title_full Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication
title_fullStr Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication
title_full_unstemmed Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication
title_short Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication
title_sort elephants as an animal model for self-domestication
topic Biological Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10104499/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37011191
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2208607120
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