The turkey is the centrepiece of the US Thanksgiving tradition, though the specimens we eat today are a far cry from their hunted wild relatives, reminiscent of the birds early settlers would have found and Native Americans hunted.

BBC: Shooting a Thanksgiving dinner

Such sterile fields will offer little or no food or shelter to wildlife, and there is already evidence that the genes for herbicide resistance can spread to wild relatives of crop plants, leaving us with weeds resistant to weedkiller.

BBC: Prince Charles speaks out against GM food

Many of the domesticated foxes hardly resembled their wild-type relatives at all, in both appearance and behavior even though they were genetically identical.

FORBES: The Fossils in Our Genes

This process occurs naturally in some wild grasses, notably relatives of millet.

ECONOMIST: Terminator genes