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Domestication is not only of ancient times. It is still happening today! It often involves species that are used for human consumption or for companion, and that become rare in their natural habitat. To prevent extinction, people try to breed them in captivity.

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In return benefits are easy access to the animals, and the possibility to optimise the animals through selective breeding to the (expected) demands of the market. And 'market' is a very wide concept: demand for food of animal origin, but also demands of farmers for, for example, dairy cows that can be milked by a robot, demand for dogs that can perform certain tasks, demand for horses with certain temperament, etc.

There are some (rare) occasions where new tasks are invented for certain animal species, potentially followed by domestication. A recent example may be that of the use of 'sniffer wasps' for explosives detection. These wasps are trained to smell different types of explosives and, subsequently, used in places where it is too dangerous for people (or dogs) to go to. Because wasps are small and can fly they can go places where robots can't go. Possibly these wasps in the future will be different from wild wasps. This is due to directional selection on, for example, trainability.


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