Domesticated Foxes: Man's New Best Friend?

[vellavu]

For thousands of years, dogs have been our companions. After countless generations of selective breeding, they've become hard-wired to follow human commands: sit, lie down, jump, even shake.

So far, most other animals don't come close. But what if they could?

In 1954 a Russian geneticist named Dmitry Belyaev wanted to isolate the genes that make dogs so easy to train. He started a fox farm in Siberia and set out to do with foxes in one lifetime what took dogs thousands of years.

Belyaev died in 1985, but others carried on his work; 50,000 foxes later, the project isn't complete, but it's close.

 

[Taake]

Yeah, I've seen some pictures from his project I think. The more domesticated the foxes were, the more doglike they seemed to start to look.

I follow a few people on instagram who have pet foxes. In general they seem like they're lovely for the right person, but they're very destructive and tricky to keep, so not quite the regular pet just yet I'd say. 🙂

 

[Blaze]

I really want a pet fox! They are quite lovely actually, really really friendly if raised from birth. Even pretty friendly out in the wild. But they are quite destructive and can be a handful like Taake said. Every one I've talked to who's had them love them however. I'm all for pet fox!

 

[white avenger]

So, this sounds like they are trying to make foxes more dog-like so that they will become more popular as pets than dogs. Leave it to the Russians...

I'll stick with my dogs, thanks just the same.

Something along the same note, which might have more merit, in my opinion, is the idea of replacing guide/service dogs with miniature horses.

Miniature Horse Facts

 

[Ethan Reigns]

And what happens when you are walking your pet fox and he meets up with a dog? Does he get attacked? Dogs can recognize "dog" in everything from a Chihuahua to a Tibetan Mastiff but they could react badly to a fox. If you never let them out or they stay in a caged run this might not come up, but that seems to make the fox more of a prisoner than a pet.

 

[Priceless]

I was on nights last week and we went to the golden arches for 'lunch' at about 2am. There in the car park was a fox, wrestling with some packaging, trying to release the food inside. We drove right next to him and he wasn't in the least bit bothered. It felt like you could put your hand out and he'd give it a sniff. Happy to say he did find something nice to eat, probably tastier than my veggie burger which was horrible 🙂

 

[Athena]

I don't know how I feel about pet foxes, because round here they're wild animals (in the sense that they're not city foxes, they're wild countryside foxes). I suppose centuries ago dogs were mostly wild and humans bred the domesticity into them, but why have a fox when you could have a dog?

Unless it's Mulder, then yeah, Fox me up! 😛😀

 

[vellavu]

I really want a pet fox! They are quite lovely actually, really really friendly if raised from birth. Even pretty friendly out in the wild. But they are quite destructive and can be a handful like Taake said. Every one I've talked to who's had them love them however. I'm all for pet fox!

It's a research project. Most of the "pet foxes" were sold when they had severe financial problems in the 90s.

It's a perfect and inexpensive way to re-cap the whole domestication history of dogs from wolves. I found this paragraph on wikipedia especially intriguing:

The changes manifested by the tame foxes over the generations, moreover, were not only behavioral but also physiological, just as Belyaev had expected. The first physiological change detected in the tame foxes was a lower adrenaline level. Belyaev and his team "theorized that adrenaline might share a biochemical pathway with melanin, which controls pigment production in fur", a hypothesis that has since been confirmed by research. As they became tamer, more and more of the foxes began showing "signs of the domestication phenotype"; Trut later recalled that in the early 1980s "we observed a kind of explosion-like change of the external appearance." After eight to ten generations, the tame foxes began to develop particolored coats, a trait found more in domesticated animals than in wild ones; this was followed by the development of "floppy ears and rolled tails similar to those in some breeds of dog". After 15 to 20 generations, a very small percentage of the tame foxes developed shorter tails and legs and underbites or overbites. The experimenters also discovered that the domesticated foxes show a "fear response" several weeks later than their wild counterparts, and that this delay is "linked to changes in plasma levels of corticosteroids, hormones concerned with an animal's adaptation to stress". After 12 generations of selective breeding, the corticosteroid level in the tame foxes' plasma was "slightly more than half the level in a control group". After 28 to 30 generations, "the level had halved again." At the same time, the tame foxes' brains contained higher levels of serotonin. Moreover, tame male foxes' skulls gradually became narrower, more like those of females, and litters became, "on average, one pup larger".

Basically, the selected the foxes purely based on behaviour/tameness, but the physical and visual change unexpectedly emerged along with behaviour change. This is kinda cool.

 

[Taake]

If you're lucky you can have a dog-bodyguard for your pet fox so other dogs won't mess with it 😉

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I always think it's a bit of a danger to glamourize the idea of having wild animals as pets though. Like I do think it can work out in individual cases, but I don't really support the idea of domesticating a wild animal just for our cuddling pleasure. There is a side of me that wants a fox, and would probably love that fox, but that's me being selfish, not me thinking about what's best for the animal really.

 

[vellavu]

I always think it's a bit of a danger to glamourize the idea of having wild animals as pets though. Like I do think it can work out in individual cases, but I don't really support the idea of domesticating a wild animal just for our cuddling pleasure. There is a side of me that wants a fox, and would probably love that fox, but that's me being selfish, not me thinking about what's best for the animal really.

I think it's relative. Do dogs like to be cuddled? Always. Do cats like to be cuddled? Only sometimes since they were domesticated more recently than dogs. Do wild foxes like to be cuddled? No.

The "domesticated foxes" may fell between wild foxes and domestic cats. I saw quite a lot of cats who don't like the idea of having a human friend very much and just treat them as food providers. It's possible that these foxes are currently like very cautious cats. Maybe let this breeding project last another decade and see the results again?🙂

 

[Taake]

My basic point is that we can barely take care of the domesticated animals we do have, so we are in no position to create more domesticated animals just becase we're curious or feel like it. Dogs and cats are already domesticated, that won't be changed any time soon, but purposely taking a wild animal and starting to breed it just because... it's arrogant and will, in the end, only lead to a lot of poorly treated foxes bought because they are "cute".

 

[ILLYRIAN]

The bloke up the road has been training domesticated Foxes, they are useless for country life but great for inner cities. Guaranteed to stop people having them noisy cockerels as pets within earshot.

Taake,
the bloke up the road has the answer and according to him it is a 100% guaranteed. People who have tried to be 'owners' of a Polar Bears have found problems attempting to house train them. It can even result in new 'owners' for the Polar Bear.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

They should try to domestic some people. See how they like the idea then. Take them out of their natural habitat. Lock them up in little cages. Talk in cute little baby talk at them. Not let them see another of their own kind, or god forbid if they do, make sure the see their counterpart is free while they are in bondage. Make videos of the people running into glass doors trying to escape their prison that their owner ignorantly calls a home and post them on YouTube so other idiots that own domesticated people can marvel at how similar they act. Then at night they can cry themselves to sleep thinking "will I ever be free again"

 

[Taake]

They should try to domestic some people. See how they like the idea then. Take them out of their natural habitat. Lock them up in little cages. Talk in cute little baby talk at them. Not let them see another of their own kind, or god forbid if they do, make sure the see their counterpart is free while they are in bondage. Make videos of the people running into glass doors trying to escape their prison that their owner ignorantly calls a home and post them on YouTube so other idiots that own domesticated people can marvel at how similar they act. Then at night they can cry themselves to sleep thinking "will I ever be free again"

Are you never going to forgive me for that? It was for your own good, and you got plenty of food, and those youtube vids were pretty popular.