Since we have detailed data of some strains of mice, such as C57BL/6, from experiments dating to almost 100 years ago, I wondered - do mice we use in experiments today that are derived from this strain behave the same? Have 100 years of non-selection changed their behavior or cognitive ability? I think this question might be relevant to humans, and our evolutionary future.
That's an interesting question although it would be quite difficult to give a definitive answer. We probably don't evaluate behaviour today like scientists did 100 years ago. We absolutely don't breed mice the same way it was done at this time. Then, C57/BL6 is a congenic strain, all mice have the very same genetic background (which makes thinks difficult to apply to humans, by the way), so it shouldn't be so different from one generation to the other... But then after many generations of lab breeding, the question of a slow adaptation remains. For cell lines, it's well established that the "same" cell line from different labs is actually not the same at all, although, like mice, cells are supposed to be identical and derived from a unique source. I would use (very) old behavioural experiments for low level comparisons, but I wouldn't trust them to build a theory / hypothesis...