Scientists breed cute tame foxes

BBC News ^ | Feb 8, 2005 | Staff

[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.