Domesticity

On the subject of living artifacts, it really does make sense that a dog is an artifact of human civilization. They never would have come to exist without us, we breed them to be as useful as possible, and we have created more diversity through breeding in that gene pool than is seen in almost any other single animal on earth. An experiment was done in Siberia which really underscored how complex the process of breeding for domesticity is. The researchers were trying to create a domesticated fox that could be sold as a viable, safe pet. In order to do this, they had to capture a very large sample of foxes and choose the tamest, calmest, and most docile among them, then get those foxes to reproduce and go through the sorting process again with the kits. Even if they hit upon the tamest fox ever bred, nobody can say yet if they will be able to find the trait for domesticity, not just repressing the instinct to attack but actually wanting to be part of the family "pack" and take orders from an alpha.