Going Wild (Again): Feral Rabbits In Australia Evolve New Morphologies

Is “feralization” a process of recapitulating what wild animals once looked like and once were?

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Adelaide, Australia: This “convention” of feral rabbits is a common sight in the “Outback” frontier country near Adelaide, South Australia. (Bettmann Archive)

How does domestication change wild animals? When domesticated animals return to a wild state, is this “feralization” a process of recapitulating what these animals once looked like and once were? Even Charles Darwin pondered the effects of domestication in his book, The variation of animals and plants under domestication, initially published in 1869 (ref). But first, let’s understand a little better about feralization: what is it?

“Feralization is the process by which domestic animals become established in an environment without purposeful assistance from humans,” explained the study’s lead author, evolutionary biologist Emma Sherratt, an Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide, where she specializes in macroevolution and morphometric methods. This study was part of Professor Sherratt’s ARC Future Fellowship.

To do this study, Professor Sherratt collaborated with a team of international experts to assess the body sizes and skull shapes of domesticated, feral and wild rabbits. Their study revealed that when domesticated rabbit breeds return to the wild and feralize, they do not simply revert to their wild…