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.