Scientists breed cute tame foxes

BBC News ^ | Feb 8, 2005 | Staff

[balrog666]

Forget hounds - foxes could become man's newest best friend, as scientists have shown they can be tamed.

After 45 years of breeding, tame foxes that wag their tails, greet humans with excited barks and look cute have been born in Siberia.

The original foxes were all black, but the new critters have white patches, big floppy ears, and curly tails.

The new foxes are also more curious, better at understanding humans, and less frightened of new things.

The scientists bred about 45,000 foxes to get to the tame stage.

When breeding the animals, they only chose them on how well they responded to people.

But the physical changes came as well - making scientists think cuteness comes along with being tame.

[balrog666]

A New Species in the Making?

Also reported in Current Biology

Also like pet dogs, the domesticated foxes can "read" human cues (pointing, for example) much better than their wild cousins or even tame chimpanzees, according to a new study published today in Current Biology. The study authors call such behavior social intelligence. They say its appearance in domesticated foxes may help us better understand how intelligence developed in humans and other animals.

And in Nature:

Friendly foxes are cleverer For almost half a century, a population of foxes in Siberia has been bred to be unafraid of humans and non-aggressive. Now these foxes seem to have shown that social skills come as a perk of being friendly. Dogs, domesticated from their wild wolf cousins over millennia, are not only less likely to bite or bolt, but have also gained the ability to communicate with their human companions. For example, if a human points or looks at an object, the dog will also look at it.

Brian Hare, an anthropologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had previously shown that dogs are more likely than undomesticated animals - even chimps - to be able to communicate in this way with humans. But was this social sophistication something that was specifically bred for during their domestication, or was it a by-product? We were really surprised - we all thought that the foxes were going to fail.

An opportunity to find out came from the Siberian foxes, which have been bred for friendliness but have had limited contact with humans. The project was set up in 1959 by Dmitry K. Belyaev of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk to examine the genetics of domestication.

Each fox is tested at the age of seven months to see whether they approach humans (and whether they bite). The 'friendlier' foxes are bred, and a separate, control, population is bred randomly. Hare and his team studied fox kits that had spent "probably a grand total of 20 minutes" with humans, according to Hare, so they could not have learned how to interact with them.

Introduced into a room with two hiding places for food and a human pointing and gazing intently at the one spot that actually concealed food, the 'tame' foxes took the hint and found it, whereas the 'wild' ones were flummoxed. The researchers report their results in Current Biology.

"We were really surprised - we all thought that the foxes were going to fail," admits Hare. It seems, therefore, that social intelligence does not have to be specifically selected for. It simply comes along with friendliness. Hare believes that his results have implications for the oft-debated origins of human social intelligence. Perhaps humans found it favorable to be less aggressive and fearful, and to be more tolerant and cooperative, and these changes brought along with them a boost in cognitive skills.

"Selection for being smart might not have been the first step," suggests Hare. "First you need to have a change in how you view your social world, so we had a platform from which these new abilities can evolve." Other researchers caution that the results of the test can not be taken too far. Bruce Blumberg, who studies animal cognition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and Ray Coppinger, a canine biologist at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, say that one cannot quite say that this test definitively shows an ability in foxes. Perhaps the 'tame' foxes were just more interested in food, they suggest.

"Hare and colleagues' latest results are intriguing," says Blumberg. "But much much more work needs to be done before we can make any definitive claims, or generalize beyond the results that they have generated." The specially domesticated foxes are not only socially adept, adds Hare, they are regular charmers. "They behave like dogs," he says. "They whine and bark, they wag their tails, they pee for joy, and they just want to cuddle with you." But don't expect fox kits to be appearing in pet stores any time soon. The foxes have a pungent musk and love to dig and hide food, says Hare. "They would bury your food in your sofa and you would only find it three months later."

[balrog666]

News ping!

[sassbox]

awwww

[jwalburg]

To make them no fun for hunters no doubt. What did they DO with the 45,000?

[PatrickHenry]

EvolutionPing

A pro-evolution science list with over 240 names. See list's description at my homepage. FReepmail to be added/dropped.

[night reader]

I want one!

[exnavy]

I married a cute, tame, fox ... oh nevermind.

[ArmyBratproud]

I remember, a few years back, hybrid wolf/dogs being a new trend to own.

UNTIL THEY STARTED REVERTING BACK TO INSTINCT AND STARTED KILLING!.


Hope the folks who buy the foxes don't have any pet birds.

[dangus]

Anybody else find it amusing that a guy named "Hare" has successfully bred friedly foxes?

[dfwgator]

Did he say cute foxes?

[dangus]

Good for you. They are hard to domesticate. :^D

[oyez]

Kind of like ferrets. They say they are domesticated. How can anything so destructive be domesticated?

[Question Liberal Authority]

When breeding the animals, they only chose them on how well they responded to people.

That's how I chose a person to breed with myself.

Or is that too much information?

[Moose4]

Cute fuzzy ping.

}:-)4

[PatrickHenry]

Website with related background info: the farm-fox experiment.

[dfwgator]

OK let's try that again,

Did someone say 'cute foxes'?

[Age of Reason]

They should breed tame racoons as pets.

[Publius6961]

Perhaps the 'tame' foxes were just more interested in food, they suggest.

Fascinating article. There is a lot of food for thought there.

One thing though. I may be missing a lot of insight in the behavioral sciences, but that statement makes absolutely no sense to me. Why should the ones more inclined to be social be any more interested in food?? One would think it is the other way around.
My dog, while eating, will come over to be petted if I call him.
Hey. What do I know?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[CarryaBigStick]

My wifes a fox too, but she sure ain't tame.

[balrog666]

Potential new pets for the future.

[palmer]

My dog, while eating, will come over to be petted if I call him.

My cats will wander off to eat while I'm petting them.

[Bigs from the North]

45 years and 45,000 fox sounds like a huge number, but think of the generations of humans and wild dogs/wolves that had to live side by side and slowly over time become the first domesticated dogs.

Just show that time, and human patience can do wonderous things.
Unlike the wolf dog hybred, they are not combinations, they are selective breeding for specific qualities, Like cattle, horses, and the numerous breeds of dogs adn cats.

[TexasCajun]

Breed or Manufacture?

[CONSERVE]

so how long before they hit the pet shops?

[KarlInOhio]

I saw a show about this once. The scientists haven't figured out why the tameness of the animals is related to the change in coloration but it seems to occur every time.

[ORECON]

We already have one. She is a Papillion.

[KarlInOhio]

I think this is the same article, but the full text instead of a teaser trying to get you to sign up for a paid service:

http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/jsk/canid.htm

[ClearCase_guy]

Anybody else find it amusing that a guy named "Hare" has successfully bred friedly foxes?

I love stuff like that. Years ago I saw a book entitled "Forms of Animal Communication" by Dr. Robert Birdsong.

[Twinkie]

Sweet looking little dog!

[Graymatter]

Do we want a critter that isn't quite as doggy as a dog, not to mention one that will P4 Joy? And that one on the right in the pic looks a little buzzed, don't you think?

One good thing comes out of this. Scientists have finally concluded that if you're going to be tolerant and cooperative it helps not to be a fool. Duuuuuuh....

Now, what about those 45000 pelts? They are where?

[Capriole]

Fantastic. I had a pet fox when I was a child and it was wonderful--smart, sweet, funny, constantly playful. I'd love to have another one. I might have to have a little talk with my Basenji first, though.

[birddog]

They were breed for their coats....

[dennisw]

bttt

[trisham]

they pee for joy,

*****************

Uh, I think I'll stick with hounds, thanks.

[AdmSmith]

Take a look at this site http://www.kc.net/~wolf2dog/wayne2.htm about the molecular evolution of the dog family.

The number of chromosomes varies from 36 in the Red fox to 78 in wolf and jackal. The domestic dog is an extremely close relative of the gray wolf, differing from it by at most 0.2% of mtDNA sequence.

[pageonetoo]

They should breed tame racoons as pets.

You still can't send them to the store...

[pageonetoo]

...Perhaps humans found it favorable to be less aggressive and fearful, and to be more tolerant and cooperative, and these changes brought along with them a boost in cognitive skills.

[balrog666]

http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/jsk/canid.htm

Excellent find!

Forty years into our unique lifelong experiment, we believe that Dmitry Belyaev would be pleased with its progress. By intense selective breeding, we have compressed into a few decades an ancient process that originally unfolded over thousands of years. Before our eyes, "the Beast" has turned into "Beauty," as the aggressive behavior of our herd's wild progenitors entirely disappeared. We have watched new morphological traits emerge, a process previously known only from archaeological evidence. Now we know that these changes can burst into a population early in domestication, triggered by the stresses of captivity, and that many of them result from changes in the timing of developmental processes. In some cases the changes in timing, such as earlier sexual maturity or retarded growth of somatic characters, resemble pedomorphosis.

[Eska]

Have bottle-fed coons and in the end they still leave when its time; but one come back nx year to show off its young and the old dog remembered the coon and didn't kill it.

Once we watched a bunch of pups playing outside den. We set box trap and had one the nx day. Stunk bad and was too wild at birth. We let it go back at den and it run down hole. Imagine what it said to it's litter mates. "Well I was in their house" No more went near that box trap after that.

[Buggman]

lol That was my first thought too.

[balrog666]

Do we want a critter that isn't quite as doggy as a dog, not to mention one that will P4 Joy? And that one on the right in the pic looks a little buzzed, don't you think?

Over the years, other investigators and I have raised several fox pups in domestic conditions, either in the laboratory or at home as pets. They have shown themselves to be good-tempered creatures, as devoted as dogs but as independent as cats, capable of forming deep-rooted pair bond's with human beings-mutual bonds, as those of us who work with them know. If our experiment should continue, and if fox pups could be raised and trained the way dog puppies are now, there is no telling what sort of animal they might one day become.

[King Prout]

interesting.

[dljordan]

They will become fashionable and every half-wit moron will want one. More animals to be abused.

[elli1]

Why should the ones more inclined to be social be any more interested in food??

Totally unscientific observation but we have two blue crown conure juveniles obtained from different sources. The more social one of the two is the one who is decidedly more interested in food. I suspect that it's an adaptation response linked to appetite.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Physicist]

I've long wanted to see somebody domesticate the grizzly bear. If they could somehow be given the social instincts of dogs, what fantastic guard (or labor) animals they would make!

Polar bears would also be interesting candidates for domestication.

[Physicist]

But the physical changes came as well - making scientists think cuteness comes along with being tame.

Red flag right there.

My suspicion is that the cuter the animal, the more likely it is that people will judge it to be "responding well" to people.

[ORECON]

I've long wanted to see somebody domesticate the grizzly bear. If they could somehow be given the social instincts of dogs, what fantastic guard (or labor) animals they would make!

Judge Roy Bean had the Watch Bear. I love that movie.

[Dead Corpse]

Half-wit moron checking in... Better a domesticated fox than what my wife wants. I will NOT spend time in the same house with a rat terrier.