AUG 21, 2018

Animals Have Changed a Lot Since Humans Began Breeding Them

WRITTEN BY: Anthony Bouchard

People first started breeding animals about 10,000 years ago, and it’s safe to say that many bred animals have changed a lot since then.

After people began breeding animals, some lost many of their natural traits. Horned animals lost their horns, skinny animals gained more body fat, and unpredictable animals became tamer. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

These changes are readily observed in a variety of livestock animals, including chickens, cows, pigs, sheep, and turkeys, to name a few. But if you thought hard enough about it, you could probably recall some oithers.

While the changes aren’t drastic, they’re certainly enough to make discerning livestock animals from their wild counterparts easy. Moreover, there’s evidence that some animals are still changing, so perhaps they’ll look even more different after hundreds or thousands of years.