I wasn't able to find the similar idioms in the dictionaries. What is omitted before 'Similarly with animals'?
Of cultivated crops, cereals were of the greatest economic importance in the Mediterranean region in ancient times, just as rice was the basic type of food in East Asia, and Indian maize and quinoa in the Americas. Since wild plants were necessarily self-seeding for their survival, the early Neolithic farmers favored individual plants that had developed suicidal mutations that prevented the pod from opening naturally and scattering the seed. Thus they were able to harvest their crops without losing grains, and could later separate the seeds from the pods. Similarly with animals: those that exhibited juvenile characteristics were favored over the strong, and bred to eliminate their wild characteristics. This ━ the earliest form of genetic manipulation by humans ━ was eventually to make a significant portion of Mediterranean flora and fauna dependent on human assistance in reproduction and survival: at least as sobering an innovation as the genetic modification of foods that is being debated at the beginning of the twenty-first century.