August Weisman tested a similar idea in an experiment in which he cut off the tails of sixty-eight mice over five generations. Of 901 pups born, none of them was born without a tail. He wasn’t really testing use of a trait, but nevertheless was asking whether evolution might follow an acquired trait. Of course, as geneticist Steve Jones enjoys pointing out, the Jews have been performing a version of this experiment for a few thousand years, and so far a boy without a foreskin is yet to be born.
