Domesticated animals such as dogs, pigs and horses often sport floppy ears, patches of white hair and other features that are unknown in their wild ancestors. These traits—collectively referred to by scientists as a “domestication syndrome”—are the result of breeding less aggressive individuals. Drawing from his new book, The Goodness Paradox (2019, Pantheon Books), Richard Wrangham shows that our cousin apes, the bonobos, also exhibit a domestication syndrome, making them the first clear example of a “wild domesticate.” Self-domestication in the wild now seems likely to be a widespread phenomenon, responsible even for the evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens.