Magazine
March-April 1999
March-April 1999
Volume: 87 Number: 2
Close bonding between a pet and its owner is one of the rewards of animal domestication. Over the course of a remarkable 40-year experiment in Siberia, such bonds have formed between the experimenters and foxes they have raised in domestic conditions. Results from the experiment launched by the late Russian geneticist Dmitry Belyaev and described by Lyudmila Trut in "Early Canid Domestication: The Farm-Fox Experiment" support Belyaev's hypothesis that behavioral and developmental genetics are closely linked. The cover illustration was painted by Tom Dunne from a photograph taken on the fox farm during the experiment's early years.
In This Issue
- Astronomy
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Communications
- Computer
- Engineering
- Environment
- Evolution
- Mathematics
- Medicine
- Physics
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Technology
Walking on Water
Robert Bowen Suter
Physics
Fishing spiders move over water in ways that appear perplexing, yet the mechanics of their locomotion yield readily to experimental analysis
Mantle Plumes and Mountains
Gary Oppliger, Andrew Hynes
Physics
The progress of southwestern North America across a plume may demonstrate a previously overlooked form of mountain building
The Evolution of Hemoglobin
Ross Hardison
Biology Evolution
Studies of a very ancient protein suggest that changes in gene regulation are an important part of the evolutionary story
The Gestural Origins of Language
Michael C. Corballis
Psychology
Human language may have evolved from manual gestures, which survive today as a "behavioral fossil" coupled to speech
