Farewell Lyudmilla

Lyudmilla Trut“Deep inside my soul is a pathological love for animals.”

Lyudmila Trut

It had just been announced that geneticist Lyudmila Nicolaevna Trut died on October 9th, 2024.

She started work on Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyayev’s extraordinary longitudinal study onto the genetic basis of domestication in 1958 and kept it running throughout the vicissitudes of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 when neither humans nor foxes had easy access to the basic necessities for life.

Both Belyayev and Trut were internationalists and looked outwards to fellow scientists when the official stance was of hostility both within and against the Soviet Union and Russia. Their courage and scientific rigour under very difficult circumstances not only kept the flag flying for Darwinism during the post-Stalin years when Lamarckism was advocated but helped to prove what Darwin could only have surmised at a time when the study of genetics was barely in its infancy.

Belyaev died in 1985 but Trut and her dedicated colleagues continued his work, devising experiments to support their theses and continually battling for funding, sometimes standing in the road outside the farm in Novosibirsk hailing passing cars to solicit donations. It was her article published in American Scientist that brought the work to wide attention and garnered enough practical and financial support to sustain the experiment. The experiment is now in its 66th year and continues to inform our understanding of the origin of the domestic dog and other species.

Trut said “One day I will be gone but I want my foxes to live forever.”

Now that that day has come, it is our duty to ensure that it does.

 

Going Out With A Bang?


Going Out With A Bang?

Sarah Owen has introduced a private members bill in an attempt to restrict the sale and use of fireworks; it is currently in a second reading in the House of Commons. The effort is support by the Dogs Trust and supports a study which they undertook in 2021 that found that more than half of owners surveyed said that their dogs were afraid of fireworks.

Research by The Kennel Club’s Petlog has found that there was an 81% increase in dogs reported as missing (not to mention cats) compared to two weeks prior to the count. Not only are there more events that are “celebrated” using fireworks than in past decades, those events are not confined to the dates of the events but spread over a couple of weeks including weekends before and after. Fireworks are also easily available to those who deliberately intend harm.

So of course, it is not only dogs that suffer: in addition to other animals, fireworks engender pollution and anti-social behaviour and strain already overstretched resources whilst breeches of existing law are simultaneously inadequately policed. The Home Office recorded a 60% increase on the number of attacks on emergency service personnel in the last decade. Restricting sales and displays to public events only will be a lot safer as well as making it possible to predict noise and take suitable precautions.

There are plenty of alternatives to fireworks in addition to quiet fireworks for those who insist on noise as it is unlikely that an outright ban would ever succeed. Economic constraints have led to a decline in public displays for several years in succession so it is important that potentially dangerous private displays are policed adequately.

Unfortunately only 3-6% of private members bills are passed, but Sarah Owen is to be congratulated on her persistence. In the meantime, adding weight to campaigns is always helpful as it can put further pressure on government to take heed.

In the meantime, there is a lot that can be done to desensitise animals to noise and lights flashing in the months leading up to firework season as well as mitigating the effects during the events.