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There’s a common assumption (and rightly so) that the story of domesticated animals runs parallel to that of the story of human civilization. Once we had learned to plant and harvest, to build shelter and cook our food, we began the process of enlisting animals to help. However, recent ideas from a dynamic anthropologist from Duke University’s Institute for Brain Sciences hypothesizes that domestication may not be an exclusively human endeavor. Bonobos, primates that are closely related to Chimpanzees, show an incredible range of domestic traits without ever having been actively domesticated by people.

Hare recalls a a lecture from Harvard anthropologist Richard Wranghem on the evolutionary puzzle of the Bonobo, which share a number of traits with Chimpanzees but no one can seem to explain why.” Hare made the connection to a breed of “silver foxes”, bred by Russian geneticist Demitri Belyaev. Belyaev took the least aggressive foxes and interbred them, looking for naturally occurring domestic traits; docility, trainability, temperament and response to stress and social cues. The result was a white splotchy fox that behaviorally was no different than today’s domestic dogs, with some added physical changes as well; shorter canines, white splotches on the fur, floppier ears, and a curlier tail. He managed this within 20 generations of his “silver foxes”, an evolutionary nanosecond.