Hold on there. The study uncovered genetic traits that were completely unexpected and had never been expressed. If there had been any hybridisation the origin of those traits would have been unprovable. The genetics for floppy ears, curly tail, spotted coats were there in the species itself all along. Do you not understand that as much merit as there is in some hybridisation, it is not the only way to elicit change in a species?
Once again, for emphasis, there was no hybridisation, just years of rigorously conducted breeding trials and scientific methodology. that proved the original hypothesis, that there was indeed a genetic component for temperement. It also, fortuitously, proved that the same genetics corelated to changes in the morphology of that species. If you delve further into the publshed studies, the links between the changes or sensitivities to hormones in the test subjects is really intriguing.
The implications from the studies to changes in various domesticated animals over history, where man originally selecting for behaviours such as 'tameness' may have unwittingly therefore produced such traits as floppy ears, spotted coats etc in antiquity without any need for hybridisation. Again, in the original wild species the genetics for those morphological traits already existed but was not expressed until man's selection process of chosen traits came to influence the subsequent generations of cattle/sheep/dogs or whatever.
To relate this to corns.....without any hybrid theory involved...I have a postulation. By selecting from those snakes which were easily tamed and raised on pinky mice, we could unwittingly have selected those corns with the genetics for such traits as pied/striped/motley. Those genes were never expressed in the wild, until our manipulation of the selected, colourful, easy to raise corns created the right genetic mix for the pattern abnormalities to be expressed. None of us are particularly scientific, but we use Punnet squares to try to predict outcomes, buy from trusted, known sources, and then Voila! Someone puts together just the right combination and in the resulting clutch there are genes expressed we never knew existed, without hybridisation at all. Not created by us, they were in the corn's genome all along.
