Though the process of domesticating wild animals for human use and consumption is as old as mankind, yet the genetic process that transforms wild animals into domesticated pets and livestock were never fully understood. An international team of scientists made a breakthrough discovery, which shows that genes in control the development of the brain and the nervous system are vital to the domestication process.

The domestication of animals and plants, a prerequisite for the development of agriculture, is one of the most important technological revolutions during human history. Domestication of animals started as early as 9,000 to 15,000 years ago and initially involved dogs, cattle, sheep, goats and pigs.

Charles Darwin wrote in “On the Origin of Species” that “…no animal is more difficult to tame than the young of the wild rabbit; scarcely any animal is tamer than the young of the tame rabbit.” Darwin used domestic animals as a proof-of-principle that it is possible to change phenotypes by selection.

The rabbit was tamed about 1,400 years ago in the monasteries of southern France. When domestication occurred, the wild ancestor, the European rabbit, was confined to the Iberian Peninsula and southern France. In contrast to domestic rabbits, wild rabbits have a very strong flight response because they are hunted by eagles, hawks, foxes and humans and therefore must be very alert and reactive to survive in the wild.

“The domestication of rabbits depended upon small genetic changes in many genes rather than more radical mutations in a few genes,” explained Jeffrey Good, University of Montana assistant professor and a co-author on the study, in a statement. “This pattern contrasts with the large-effect genetic changes that are typically associated with striking differences in the size or appearance of diverse domestic dog breeds, for example. These results are exciting because they shed light on what types of genetic modifications are likely to be important during the early stages of domestication.”

The scientists first sequenced the entire genome of one domestic rabbit to develop a reference genome assembly. Then, they re-sequenced the full genomes of six different breeds of domestic rabbit, as well as gathered samples from wild rabbits located in 14 different places across the Iberian Peninsula and southern France.

“No previous study on animal domestication has involved such a careful examination of genetic variation in the wild ancestral species,” said Leif Andersson, a professor at Uppsala University, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Texas A&M University. “This allowed us to pinpoint the genetic changes that have occurred during rabbit domestication.”