I remember seeing a documentary about these foxes last year. IIRC they were part of a science experiment to see if it was nature or nurture that was the key factor in the domestication of dogs.
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.
Sort of mostly right. You can't artificially inseminate with an embryo though, only semen.
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.
I studied this in a course on canine psychology and you are exactly right that they were selecting only for tameness and that it helped answer the question of why we see certain traits in domesticated dogs.
It was a tongue-in-cheek comment. "Inseminate" means "to introduce semen into the reproductive tract of a female." You implant embryos, not inseminate.
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).
I think I saw or read about this too. I remember they did the same experiment with foxes.... and rats. Imagine walking into a room full of hundreds of rats bred for generations to be as vicious as possible.
The dingo must have already been at least somewhat domesticated when it was brought to Australia (4-12,000 years ago, later than the first humans) because nobody is going to cross a 50 km strait in a canoe/raft/boat with a wild dog.
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.
Floating there on its own seems pretty unlikely, since Australia didn't acquire any other wildlife from South-East Asia. At the time of British settlement the dingo was the only placental mammal on the continent, apart from bats and humans.
The Australian Kelpie is part dingo part collie (originally). The resulting animal is an extremely intelligent but hardy working dog. One that works all day in hot conditions but follows its master unwaveringly. I would say that Dingoes aren't true wild dogs.
Ancient hunters have created a breed of domesticated wolves/dingos, cost $100 or less in countries where they're subsidised at your nearby humane society.
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.
Said brother should be careful. The problem with pet wolves and wolf hybrids is that they are happy to view you as pack, but are still wired to try to take over the pack when they grow up and get the opportunity.
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.
Yes, that's absolutely true, and they've had a 'battle for dominance' already, he came out of it with nothing more than a bunch of scratches though (fortunately).
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.
Well, with not taking chances - aside from living with his four footed friend - he is very much conscious of the nature of his friend and takes all the precautions to make sure that it will not have some tragic ending.
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.
> Dogs have been bred for many thousands of generations
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.
All dogs are still (technically, I'd hate to think of the logistics in some cases) interbreedable, no speciation has occurred over all those thousands of generations.
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.
True, but it's better than some redneck retard seeing an opportunity and buying a male and female and inbreeding them to make $3000 a pop until they turn viscous, like German Shepherds, Golden Retrievers, etc.
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.
Perhaps they want to keep domesticated foxes away from the rest of the ecosystem? Even if they are relatively close to other foxes, there are probably differences that may result in unfortunate consequences.
It could also be for behavioral reasons they prefer not to mention. I don't doubt that a neutered fox, much like the domestic dog, is much more aggressive with its testes intact.
While this is interesting for a scientific point of view, I really hope these don't become popular in the US. The last thing we need is another "cute" animal that gets over-bred. Visit your local humane society and see how well thats working out for cats and dogs.
I tried to contact these people about a year ago, but never received a response. Couldn't find any evidence that they've ever imported a fox for anyone else, either. They may not be a going concern.
Foxes spread a horrible smell, most people don't know because they've never been next to a fox and they think they will smell like a cat or a dog(wich also smell but it isn't comparable)
Yeah, if I were a politician I'd be heading this one off at the pass and banning it before it became popular. The last thing the world needs is another designer pet. Sure, do scientific research but don't release these things on the world.
This can only end badly for everyone involved, the foxes, the owners, children and various native species in the vicinity of the adopting home.
