Russian scientists have created a breed of domesticated foxes (costs $6K)
sibfox.com
sibfox.com
Basically with each litter of foxes they selected the most friendly, and allowed them to breed, creating more friendly / domesticated foxes. They also selected the most vicious and bred them separately as a control. Later when the behaviours became more pronounced they artificially inseminated the vicious foxes with the domesticated foxes embryos to find out if they would be aggressive or domestic. They turned out to be domestic.
Interestingly because foxes are solitary animals they behave more like cats than dogs.
Presumably they went wild again afterwards, but it must be easier to re-domesticate a dog that was domesticated a few thousand years ago than to domesticate an entirely new species.
Was it brought there or did it raft there by itself ?
(that's not a joke, plenty of animals have been involuntarily moved between continents on makeshift rafts)
The dingo is a fascinating creature.
What was interesting about the experiment is that while they only selected for tameness, a lot of the characteristics you see in modern dogs arose. For instance, piebald fur, curly fur, curly tails, floppy ears, shortened snout, etc. Basically what was happening was that by selecting for tameness, they were both selecting for a lengthier juvenile period and more paedomorphic traits.
So this answered the question of how humans managed to select for traits in domesticated dogs that don't appear in wolves. How do you select for piebald color if it isn't present in the initial gene pool? Or a curly tail? Well, those variations are a consequence of domestication.
For instance, only in domesticated animals do you see that characteristic white forehead star, and they made that discovery of what was happening from these animals. As an animal grows, cells containing melanin migrate throughout the body. But if you length the juvenile period and make them move more slowly, some die before they reach their final destination. The white star on the forehead, seen in these foxes as well as horses, cows, and others, is because the melanin containing cells reach there last, and they don't quite make it.
Of course you can. Fertilize the eggs in vitro then transplant them.
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The original work was done by Dmitri Belyaev
Link to the article: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/628a8500-ff1c-11de-a677-00144feab4...
From what the article said, as they started breeding the foxes with the most favorable characteristics, they noticed physical changes in the foxes. Their ears became floppier, they were more likely to become spotted, and that they were much more doglike (i.e., tail wagging and barking).
As an aside, I think Radiolab is one of the best podcasts out there and it's certainly worth a listen if you've never heard it before.
I'd love to know if that's true, or if it's some hell-bent crazy interpretation of IP laws.
I know they're doing this to keep their profit artificially high, however I'd rather someone be making $6000 selling healthy well cared for animals rather than see idiots abusing animals because they're a new novelty.
I own exotic pets and I've heard true horror stories of people buying sick pets, I'd hate to see that happening with a new species. I'd love it if the domestic fox could be the one domesticated species we don't bastardize over sheer greed.
edit: updated for a less euro-centric view. Thanks araneae
(Also, I suppose a small fraction of the money goes to support their IMO interesting research. Which is approximately infinite percent more for a charitable cause than from the price of a designer cat or dog.)
You can actually befriend foxes in the wild near your home relatively easily if you are patient. I'd be very wary of letting one of them (or one of the 'tame' ones above) near very young children though.
Dogs have been bred for many thousands of generations and yet there still are plenty of them that bear careful watching in spite of being tame, with these animals I'd be extra careful, their roots are much more wild than any regular dog you'll ever meet.
The brother of one of my ex employees in Canada had a half-wolf, half Sheppard. An absolutely amazing animal but imprinted on one person only, dog to him, wolf to the rest of the world. I imagine these foxes to be much more tame than their wild cousins but until you've seen them in stressful situations you'd have to be careful with individual specimen, even if as a breed they're considered tame enough for being around the house. The same goes for dogs.
In Australia there are people that hold dingos as pets, that's another interesting option.
Dogs have been bred for many purposes: to be attractive, to be aggressive, to herd, to hunt. These foxes have been bred exclusively for tameness. The starting stock were semi-domesticated fur foxes. These foxes are far from wild animals.
Dogs and wolves can still interbreed and the resulting offspring is fertile. So, technically, dogs are 'tame wolves'.
These foxes are much closer to their wild roots, it's great they've been bred for tameness (a much better trait to select for than beauty or some other peripheral trait, which might come at a cost, because beauty is subjective and you can easily get side-effects when selecting for it) but even so I'd be pretty careful. Until there are 1000's of these animals out there that have been subjected to all kinds of situations you'll be in uncharted territory, no matter what the breeding was initially for.
Another risk is that if these become more popular that less experienced money oriented breeders will try to get in on the market and will re-introduce bad traits because it's more profitable to use all animals as breeding stock in stead of the ones with the more desirable trait.
This sort of thing has come close to destroying the reputation of quite a few dog breeds.
Female Ligers are often fertile. Biology can be quite surprising. The concept of a species is a human one, used for convenience.
> Another risk is that if these become more popular that less experienced money oriented breeders
That won't be a problem, at least in the near term, because they are only selling neutered pups.
> Until there are 1000's of these animals out there that have been subjected to all kinds of situations you'll be in uncharted territory
That may be the case. I don't have much experience with animals. Interesting points :)
This can lead to the situation where the pet is just fine until the owner gets injured. Then the "pet" seizes the opportunity to take leadership and breeding rights. As you can imagine, this is rather distressing for the humans involved.
The guy is very well aware of what he's doing and is not taking any chances.
He lives in Northern Ontario, just North of Sault ste. Marie, in the bush, on his own, no other family members nearby, and he knows the risks involved.
> The guy ... is not taking any chances.
is contra-indicated by the fact he knowingly lives with a half-wolf and that:
> He lives in Northern Ontario, just North of Sault ste. Marie, in the bush, on his own, no other family members nearby
it reminds me of when people who skydive out of airplanes describe themselves as "safety conscious". :)
He's as knowledgeable about wild animals as any person I've met.
Living with another human being is also taking a chance, after all one night they might turn out to be the latest incarnation of Hanibal Lecter after all. Life is risk, some of it you can mitigate, some of it you feel you have to take.
But you can limit the damage from the risks you take if you think things through in advance and that's what I mean with 'he doesn't take any chances'.
Just like the skydiver you mention, they usually go to extremes to make sure their gear is in proper working order. The skydiver may take a risk jumping out of the plane, the pilot still has to land it, which is a risky operation all by itself. Risk is simply unavoidable, not thinking about risks increases the risks sometimes far more than the risks themselves.
Great.
This can only end badly for everyone involved, the foxes, the owners, children and various native species in the vicinity of the adopting home.