Humans Are Reason For Why Domestic Animals Have Such Strange And Varied Coat Colors

You notice it in your everyday life, the bewildering diversity in coat colour among our pigs, dogs and other domestic animals. This stark contrasts with the uniformity of colour within wild animals. A new study on pigs reveals that the prime explanation for this phenomenon is that humans have actively changed the coat colour of domestic animals by cherry-picking and actively selecting for rare mutations and that this process that has been going on for thousands of years.

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This is a prime of example of ways in which humans engineer nature.

P.S. - calling all crafters and artsy types... New Contest: Pet Craft Projects - suggest one to win!

More pig and pig-color news:

• Early farmers bred different coloured animals for their own amusement
• Organs transplants from pigs could be a reality in less than a decade claims Lord Winston
• Colourful pigs evolved through farming, not nature