SciShow Talk Show - Selective Breeding & the Rat 

Abby throughout this whole video is just like PET ME!!!

I had two ratties. One passed away this past October and the other in February. I miss them both horribly and seeing ratties made me so happy. I've had several rats in my lifetime and I loved hearing all of them mentioned. I had a couple of rex males, most of the others were hooded fancy rats. I never had a dumbo but I'd love one! They are the friendliest of pets. My last baby, Ophelia, was very sick near the end and she used to escape her cage at night and sneak on to my bed and sleep on my pillow. All this being very sick and partially paralyzed in her back legs. They're devoted and wonderful pets.

SEND OUT YOUR WARGI RIDERS! Lol. Excellent episode. Selective breeding is fascinating.

Abby is adorable! She's such a snuggly fluffy sweetheart :D I couldn't stop watching her the whole time she was out. And my heart melted when Hank and Sweet Pea were nose-to-nose! This was a great episode.

I have a psychology degree and one of my classes required us to have lab rats. I named mine Pippin and she was the smartest rat in the class. I wanted to keep her so badly after the end of the class but we weren't allowed to. She was absolutely sweet and adorable with her white fur and red eyes (specifically bred that way for class).

@ 15:32 she says breeding them this way doesn't make them tastier.... there's only one way she could know this for certain D:

"Look at your babies!" Lol

Rats do make wonderful pets, but they have a very short life span. My oldest had barely made it to 4.. I miss them! =\

I died when he said "Send out your Wargi riders!" in a skyrim accent xD

The cuteness levels were high in this one! These talk shows are awesome, keep 'em coming!

I kept making "aw" sounds after the rats came out. I LOVE them. Great pets. :)

I'd love to see a scishow episode about spectral signatures of different elements. I don't totally understand how that works, and would like to know more.

I have been watching episodes backwards to get caught up on them, so I'm really late getting here. I just wanted to say how excited I was to finally see rats on Sci Show Talk Show!!! They are my favorite animal!

Thanks for the great video I showed it my 7th grade students and we had wonderful discussions about selective breeding.

possibly the cutest episode of sci show talk show

This episode makes me want to have a pet rat again. I had my little hooded baby Lola for just over 4.5 years before she passed away. I picked her because she snuggled in and fell asleep in my arms in the pet store. She died in 2006, and I still miss her.

Something I never thought I'd hear from Hank Green "it's impossible without sentient influence". Bravo!

Gotta love it when you do a scishow episode about something we just talked about in class :)

There was an experiment done on the domestication of foxes that raised some really interesting points about the interplay between behavior and physical traits in domesticated animals. Basically, the foxes were selected for breeding based solely on behavioral traits (tameness), and within 30-35 generations they were acting like dogs (eagerly establishing human contact, licking faces, wagging tails, whining, and all that other dog communication stuff) and they also showed an increased tendency to develop physical traits (white patches, shorter tails, shorter legs) not found with any regularity in the wild population. It's possible that a lot of the behavioral and physical traits associated with different breeds weren't necessarily intentionally bred together into that line, but are actually just by-products of each other due to some closely linked genes that influence certain aspects of behavior and certain physical traits.

This made me so happy. I am a rat mom and it is always amazing to see them talked about in such positive light.

So great to see rats on here! I have four females and they are just the best pets. Super smart and cute and loving. They would not be so chill around strangers, though. It's so fun to see all the different traits being showcased. I love being able to have very visually distinct rats in my mischief. It makes it easy to tell them apart as they streak around the living room.

Aw the way she nudges his hand when he stops petting her is so cute

I found this fascinating and adorable which are two of the best things and especially when mixed together.

Why has tumblr not come up with a lifelike drawing of a Worgi and why is it not on a shirt yet?

I love SciShow so much, thanks guys!!!

Yea, Nick more nick please! Great show.

I really like Nick

at 12:58 the rat poos

I really enjoyed this one! All of you are doing a fantastic job over there.

Best birthday present ever! Thanks Hank! :)

Really this episode should have been called CUTESPLOSION. I don't care that it is not a real word, it described what happened!

"Oh, are we friends? Sniff sniff, don't bite me"

we were learning about this in science last term :) awesome vid

Artificial selection is faster than natural selection. That seems pretty simple to understand.

ALL THE CUTENESS!!!! I have a Corgi who I love to pieces but the biggest thing my family did not realize when getting him was the amount of hair he sheds! Energy and temperament are important but also think about how many times a week you want to vacuum enough fur up to make a sweater!

I'm so glad Nick Jenkins actually talked and participated during Jessi's time, it is much more enjoyable than him sitting back and nodding like some of the other guests did.

Can you do an episode about the permafrost feedback loop and/or climate change feedback loops in general, please?

There is a cuteness overload going on here!

More Nick! and Abby!

Theory on cats "playing with their food" which our barn cats on the farm were frequently guilty of; could this be a way of ensuring that they don't ingest sick, diseased prey? I've never heard this proposed or explained, but I have observed the same behavior Hank describes, and it's the best idea I've been able to come up with. That, or their just sadistic...which with cats, of course, is a distinct possibility as well. (Kidding. Mostly.)

I liked this ep of Scishow Talkshow. :) it was cute, funny, very informative, interesting, and NO AWKWARD.

That rats are sooo cool. I'm not surprised there's so many breeds of dog with how much people do breed them. It's amazing how from the wolf we have so many different breeds today though.

"HEY I DIDNT TELL YOU TO STOP PETTING ME!!!"

I want a Wargi now

would have liked to hear more about the rats intelligence as i had a friend who taught her rat tricks but was a great show thumbs up

That is the happiest dog I have ever seen

Oh my goodness. Not only did I get several minutes of Abby I also got several minutes of the cutest rats ever. Oh my....so much cute!

I like rats too. This was one of the most adorable episodes of SciShow Talk Show :-)

Oh dear god ! the volume.... Its perfect :P

Dwarf dog, I was wondering why Simon loved corgies

i just about died of adorableness

Best Scishow Talkshow ever! CORGI!!!

Abby has Nick pretty much trained! Every time Nick took his hand off Abby to make a gesture Abby was like: "What happened!?!? Why am I not being petted!?!?" and then Nick would automatically resume petting Abby! ADORABLE! Only pet owners would understand....My cat has me trained too!

I've never been a fan of rats, but I can't deny that the baby ones are adorable.

Awwww Hank and the rat. So cute!

Those are the cutest little rats i've ever seen.

very intresting episode

Abby is seriously the happiest dog in the world as Nick pets her.

The rats at 10:00 made me miss my snake

My respect and more, Hank, from finding out you have a Greyhound. I hope you still do. After all, this was from 6 years ago. 😊

Every time Jenkins put his hand down, Abbey hits his hand asking him to pet her again. Such a cute needy wonder!

SEND OUT YOUR WORGI RIDERS! TODAY WE FIGHT.

This episode killed me with the cutes.

I had a corgi and rats and they're both amazing🎉❤

Abby's faces are hilarious. She is an adorable dog.

I used to have a rat called Sophie. They're soo amazing and intelligent.

"Send out your Worgis!" Hahaha. I always wondered why such a small dog was used for herding cattle, and now I know, thank you.

Please some day let Jessey bring her ocelot to your show. Ocelots are my very favorite feline. And also please bring an egg for her to eat. I know I can't have one of my own, but I would love to see her on scishow!

When I was little our family of five children had a border collie named Georgia, she had never been taught to herd but she herded us around the backyard all the time!

Rats are the best!!

Wow people say they don't like cats because all they want is your attention, but that corgi was very unhappy when he stopped petting it XD

The Pembroke and Cardigan corgis were considered the same breed, and thus also cross-bred, until about 1920.

Abby's front leg movement when Nick stops stroking her is exactly the same as my brother's corgi does.

I didn't know until this moment that all I wanted in my life is a herd of Worgies.

The corgi seems to always nudge for more petting every time the guys stops petting. :3

The only thing more interesting than purebred dogs, in my opinion, are mutts. All of the dogs I've ever owned have been mutts. Lucky our oldest dog was a great number of breeds, we have no idea what she was really, but she was fairly short, ver very sweet, to my knowledge she has only ever snapped at one person, and they were poking her. We had to put her down a few years ago. Our 2nd dog Curly was some breed of herding dog, she nipped at our heels, we had to get rid of her because she bit someone, we think she was abused before. Pepper the 3rd dog is an Australian Shepherd-Lab mix, she will just run, and run, and run. She is a big sweetheart, she will just snuggle up to you, if she's been on a walk or at the dog park, otherwise she will just bark and drop a tennis ball on whatever your doing. Fritz is our youngest, he is a schnauzer-pointer mix. He is also a cuddle-bug, more so the Pepper, and she looks like a fraggle with old-man eyebrows. He will actually try to herd the dogs at the dog park, probably one of the cutest things he does. And by the way wargis sound hilarious.

love the rat section hope to see a rabbit from animal wonders on sci show one day :D

"Send out your Worgi riders" needs to be a Nerdfighter thing immediately.

cutest scishow talkshow ever :p

For those of you interested in the hows and whys of breeding, I saw a fascinating documentary once, about a Russian experiment, concerning the domestication of dogs. For this they bred silver foxes, according to their behaviour towards humans, and sometimes gave "mean" babies to a "tame" mother or the reverse, to see how it evolved. After a few generations, their had dog-like foxes behaviourally speaking as well as physically speaking: the tamest foxes colour's had changed, their tails tended to curve upwards and so on... I couldn't find the documentary again, but here: cbsu.tc.cornell.edu/ccgr/behavior/Index.html and it is quite easy to find more googleing

The best point broyght out here is that we did not imagine the final result with dog breeding. Random mutations provided unexpected opportunities and we just picked from the choices that process provided to us. We discovered and propagated corgies (and all the other breeds), as a result.

If you've ever wanted to see a tiny Warg, look no further than the Schipperke. Just don't get too close.

ITS SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE!

There's actually a breed of dog similar to what you're talking about, called the Swedish Vallhund. They basically look like a wolf/corgi.

Hybrid vitality!! Could you explore the various topics within this?

Could you make a video about the alternative theories on RU-vid that are outside of the mainstream!

That is an amazing dog

Worgi is a thing that must happen, the name alone is just perfect!

Dogs are a wonderful demonstration of the environmental factors that may morph a species.

Rats are so cute! Also, at 12:59, you can see a little pellet of poo drop. XD

interesting that nobody commented on the heartbeat in the second half of the video, not sure but I think it's Jessis

I'm only 6 minutes in right now, but I'M DYING FROM CUTENESS OVERLOAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ....so I just had to share that with the world before I continue xD

I don't know if this has been mentioned in the comments yet, but Darwin also worked with/observed artificially bred pigeons and noted that no matter to what strange shapes the animals had been bred, when left to their own devices, the lineages would revert to "plain"/natural shapes within a few generations.

This makes me want to get another rat. I miss them. They offer a different type of friendship than dogs or cats.

not just dogs but fruit, veg, flowers are crazy varied because of our influence

Haha, vorgi!:) We never trained our dogs for bird-hunting. But on a contest, were another dog were grumpy, one of them sat of and got the fake duck for my mom and put it by her feet just like he were supoed to. We did train tracking and stuff, but never this. It was his instinkt to do so! Hes a Clumber Spanjel, bird-hunting dog.

haha your little Corgi has you very well trained with the petting! :P hehe I have a Pomeranian and it absolutely infuriates me when people respond to me telling them the breed of my dog with "oh so he's just a little yappy lap dog?" no! He is very smart, willing to please and quite athletic! He is apart of the Spitz breed, of course he would be athletic! ugh I love my dog! also those rats are too cute! I would love to have a few, but I have a kitty. He is a very social kitty though, hes gotten along with any animal we've introduced him to so far. But I'm really not sure about a little rodent. lol

I love pet rats and mice, but I was always absolutely terrified when my cat would bring in mice he'd find in the garage into the house to play with.

When I hear that intro, I can help but think he'd make a great auctioneer.

Re cat and mouse playing together: In French this game is actually called jouer à chat which means play at [being a] cat!