They bred the tamest foxes from each generation and started seeing shortened snouts and floppy ears. Although there is some dispute about the initial population from a study in 2019. To my understanding the researchers with the dispute question the existence of domestication syndrome though, so the experiment would still align with the article. And I think there is some dispute over the neural crest cell explanation mentioned in the article too.
I’m surprised the article doesn’t mention the six decade long silver fox domestication experiment:
https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-018-0090-x
They bred the tamest foxes from each generation and started seeing shortened snouts and floppy ears. Although there is some dispute about the initial population from a study in 2019. To my understanding the researchers with the dispute question the existence of domestication syndrome though, so the experiment would still align with the article. And I think there is some dispute over the neural crest cell explanation mentioned in the article too.
I just learned about this the other day and it immediately came to mind when I saw this article.