Posted on 02/22/2005 8:43:05 AM PST by 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.
Potential new pets for the future.
My cats will wander off to eat while I'm petting them.
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.
Breed or Manufacture?
so how long before they hit the pet shops?
We already have one. She is a Papillion.
I love stuff like that. Years ago I saw a book entitled "Forms of Animal Communication" by Dr. Robert Birdsong.
Sweet looking little dog!
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?
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.
They were breed for their coats....
bttt
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Uh, I think I'll stick with hounds, thanks.
You still can't send them to the store...
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.
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.
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