Tuesday, July 26, 2011

More of My Insanity.. and such

So, Ben read my plan for world domina-uh... domestication! Yeah. Heheh... anyway, all joking aside, he read what I was thinking of as far as domesticating black rats and I am happy to say that he isn't so opposed to it as I at first thought he may have been. He was alluding to airing on the side of caution, which is understandable, but he wasn't outright saying no. He was talking about how the foxes I had mentioned in the previous post and in the note I posted on facebook (they're the same post, I copied it from facebook to here) and said that they didn't look like foxes anymore. Which, in the sense that their coloration changes, their skulls have a more domed shape than per usual and sometimes their tails curl.. no they don't look like foxes. But if you were to put a wild silver fox side by side with one of Belyaev's foxes, you'd see they are quite closely related. Being that they are, essentially, the same animal. Just like if you were to take Algernon (a fawn variegated berkshire) and put her next to a wild brown rat and go on coloration alone then she looks nothing like a brown rat! However, if you look at her bone structure, the shape of her skull and body in general then she's a slightly bigger brown rat with a funky coat color. He brought this up to say that through selective breeding the appearance of the rats would change in ways we can't predict yet.

Scientist have found, through studies of many different species of animal, that coat color and temperament are intrinsically linked. Being that coat pigmentation can be an indication of how well the animal will respond to you being nearby. The more pigmented an animals' coat, the more likely it is to have a very violent response. This is because when you have a wild rat with no silvering or pibald splotches in comparison to a black-eyed white (BEW) rat, the BEW is more likely to be friendly, or at least less likely to outright attack and bite you.

These genes have another fascinating effect on rats. Being that when they are more docile and less stressed by captivity, they are more fertile. The same affect was found with Belyaev's foxes. Once they'd reached full fledged domestication (the generation given for this information was 30th, but it may have happened in a prior generation), female foxes went into heat twice a year (like dogs) rather than once per year like their wild kin.

All of this factors into domestication of black rats. All the information I can get my hands on is essential. I know I won't be doing this venture for a while, a few years at least. In that time I'll be doing a lot of research as well as a lot of ratty-lovin'. Those were just some thoughts and intriguing things I found. It's odd, I'm a writer and I have quite a few aspirations for my writing which I consider dreams for my life. At the same time, this is just as much a dream as writing books. Anyway, I'll stop blabbing for now.


G'mornin, g'night or g'day

Afterthought: If I know she's a trouble-maker, why does Athena get away with everything?