History of tame foxes

The history of the domestication wild species is very extensive.  Dogs, cats, horses, pigs, cows, sheep, ducks, and many others have coexisted with humans for many years.   Others, like fox, can only be close to a human if they are a part of his coat. There sure is a way for a better coexistance with those beautiful animals.

Environmentalists and scientists at one of the breeding farms in Siberia have created a new version of the silver fox by allowing only the friendliest animals from each generation to breed.  The program was started in 1959 by Dr. Belyaev who believed that the key factor for the domestication of dogs was neither size nor reproduction but behavior.  He started experiments with a population of 100 vixens and 30 male foxes from a fur farm in Estonia.  Belyaev domesticated a population of foxes and put them under strong selection pressure for inherent tameness.  Only 5% of the most disciplined offspring were selected for further breeding.  It took 35 generations and 45,000 foxes to select this trait.  To keep environmental influences to a minimum, the foxes did not receive any special training, and their contact with humans was limited to brief behavioral tests.

The new director of the program reports that their work resulted in a breed of ultra-tame foxes that make good house pets ''as devoted as dogs but as independent as cats, capable of forming deep-rooted bonds with human beings.''  Trut wrote that the final offspring were tame as young pups and looked different from their wild ancestors.  The normal pattern of coat color that evolved in wild foxes changed in the genetically tamed fox population.  Tame foxes have irregular piebald splotches of white fur and also developed floppy ears instead of straight ones.  The domesticated foxes also generally had shorter legs and curlier tails than ordinary foxes.