Apart from plants, people have also bred domestic animals. The selection has been made in the same way: by selecting individuals with good traits. In pets, such as dogs, a variety of characteristics related to appearance, shape or behavior have been selected. As a result, a great variety of different dog breeds have been developed.

There has also been a desire to develop useful properties in domestic and farm animals, such as milk production in cows, rapid muscle growth in beef animals or wool growth in sheep. In domestic animal breeding, the characteristics of individuals are accurately recorded, and a breeding bull that produces desirable offspring can have thousands of offspring. Artificial insemination with frozen sperm is most commonly used. Bovine individuals with good traits can be propagated even more efficiently by embryo transfer, where dozens of artificially fertilized embryos are produced and transferred to cows for development. Using genetic mapping, genes can be selected for breeding even more precisely.