Breeding for aggression

Russian team breeds rats for aggression and tameness

source: Roger Highfield
New Scientist vol 211 no 2825, August 13 2011 p25

A Russian team has bred rats for aggression. The work was begun by Dmitry Belyaev in 1972. He divided rats into two groups, one bred for aggression, and the second for tameness. After Belyaev's death in 1985, Lyndmila Trut continued his work at Novosibirsk's Institute of Cytology and Genetics. Svante Paabo from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, has studied the genetics of these rats, and believes that a minimum of half a dozen genes relate to tameness.
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