Your article on gigantism was quite interesting, but I enjoyed this one even more (possibly because of the added cuteness).

When talking about pedomorphism and the pygmy elephants, I was wondering if this could also be part of the explanation for their tameness. I've read somewhere that a common part of the process of domestication is a delayed puberty and a larger number of non-adult traits retained into adulthood. The example was dogs who have a lot in common with wolf puppies, so in a sense more childishness retained into adulthood is something that usually makes species less aggressive and makes domestication easier (or is actually caused by the domestication process through selection for non-aggression).

So couldn't the pygmy elephants have naturally become tamer just as a side effect of their pedomorphism and that we are correlating this with domestication just because we see a similar retention of non-adult features in many domesticated animals?