[FormerLib]

Actually, they pushed a trait...

In an intelligently directed manner, yes.

...just as an environment would.

Really? Can you prove that?

They created an environment unfreindly to untamed animals, those that were tamable were able to reproduce, those that were not, did not.

Actually, that's not correct. Those that seemed tameable were intelligently selected and then their offspring were monitored. Can you point to the part of the article that deals with how those not selected were treated?

No, you cannot. You made assumptions about them.

The environment around a creature will do the same thing. if it gets colder, those with warmer furs will survive to reproduce, if it gets warmer, those with less fur will reproduce. Climate changes are NOT sudden, this would give the animals PLENTY of time to evolve to the changing environment that they lived in.

Yes, animals will adapt to changing conditions. They do not change into other animals, however.

Intelligence is NOT necessary for changes to take place, environmental changes are all that is necessary.

That was not proved in this experiment, which included intelligent intervention and selection. Unless you are suggesting that Balyaev and his lab assistants were without intellience?

Evolution, on a very small controlled scale, but it IS evolution.

Not even close. The effects of intelligent selection on breeding were shown here. Nothing more.

[Aric2000]

Actually, that's not correct. Those that seemed tameable were intelligently selected and then their offspring were monitored. Can you point to the part of the article that deals with how those not selected were treated?

Yes, I can, they were not allowed to breed.

Yes, animals will adapt to changing conditions. They do not change into other animals, however.

Really? PROVE it!!

Not even close. The effects of intelligent selection on breeding were shown here. Nothing more.

Really? and falling down doesn't prove that gravity exists either.... geez, what an intellect you have...

[Condorman]

The effects of intelligent selection on breeding were shown here. Nothing more.

In order for this to be a valid criticism it must first be established that the effects of deliberate selection for certain traits by humans and selection by any other environmental pressures are different. You have not done so.

[Stavka2]

Actually, that is evolution. If taken on a long enough scale, the bottle neck in genetics will eventually produce an animal that is unable to interbreed with the original species, thus forming a seperate species. Yes, the environment will do that to animals. Whether or not the environment is in turn controlled by an outside force is called Faith. But it is the environment that pushes animals into particular forms and niches. As the ice age regressed, for example, and the earth warmed, those animals with heavy pelts that could not 1. adapt to the temperature change died out. Of those who survived, those with shorter pelts were able to reproduce more quickly and successfully, thus they were able to secure only a certain bandwidth of their genetic spectrum. This in turn became the norm and eventually only genes from this norm would surface in new offspring. Taken far enough out, they become incompatible with those of the original species, if members of said species still survive. An example of this is the Grand Canyon. On the one side is the regular squirrle, on the other the Black squirrel, both species are related but are not able to interbreed, even though the black squirrel is a branch of the regular squirrel family.

On a smaller scale, can be seen the same thing amongst humans, especially more pronounced in colonies, where a small group of families caused a genetic bottleneck to appear and particular traits became dominent, which were otherwise rarely seen. Pigmies are also an example...being short allows them to survive in the savahna better, and uses less water. In the north, humans were always larger, again because of the environmental effects of body mass and generation of body heat. If these groups stayed isolated for say a few hundred more generations, they might become in compatible for cross breeding.

Now, whether you believe that God preplanned this, that He threw dice or that He just allowed chaos/nature to go its way is up to the individual belief system.

[rmmcdaniell]

Can you point to the part of the article that deals with how those not selected were treated?

No, you cannot. You made assumptions about them.

The article said: "From the outset, Belyaev selected foxes for tameness and tameness alone, a criterion we have scrupulously followed. Selection is strict;in recent years, typically not more than 4 or 5 percent of male offspring and about 20 percent of female offspring have been allowed to breed."

If the selection was for tameness, then by definition those that were not tame were not allowed to breed. This article was not written like those "Windows for Dummies" books were everything is explicitly spelled out in full anally retentive detail. Your grasping at straws for a way to discredit this study because its implications are threatening your fairy tale beliefs.