Word.ws English Dictionary

self-domestication

self-domestication noun: a hypothesized evolutionary process by which a species develops traits typically associated with domestication, such as reduced aggression or prosocial behavior, through natural selection within its own population rather than by deliberate breeding.

Noun

self-domestication (countable and uncountable, plural self-domestications)

  1. A hypothesized evolutionary process by which a species develops traits typically associated with domestication, such as reduced aggression or prosocial behavior, through natural selection within its own population rather than by deliberate breeding.
    • Other examples of nonhuman self-domestication in the wild exist—for instance, the Zanzibar red colobus monkey diverged from the mainland African red colobus in similar ways during its island isolation—but bonobos are the closest and most relevant to us. […] Central to his argument is the idea that...2019 January 29, Melvin Konner, “A Bold New Theory Proposes That Humans Tamed Themselves”, in The Atlantic, →ISSN, archived from the original on 09 Jul 2019

Forms of self-domestication

pluralself-domestications

Origin of self-domestication

From self- + domestication.

Questions about self-domestication

What does self-domestication mean?
Self-domestication means a hypothesized evolutionary process by which a species develops traits typically associated with domestication, such as reduced aggression or prosocial behavior, through natural selection within its own population rather than by deliberate breeding.
What part of speech is self-domestication?
Self-domestication is a noun.
What is the plural of self-domestication?
The plural of self-domestication is self-domestications.

Words near self-domestication in the dictionary

  1. self-documenting
  2. self-domesticate
  3. self-domesticated
  4. self-domesticates
  5. self-domesticating
  6. self-domestication
  7. self-doubt
  8. self-doubts
  9. self-dried
  10. self-dries
  11. self-drilling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: self-domestication (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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