For almost 60 years, in cold Siberia Russia, scientists have been quietly working on a monumental genetics experiment.  In the late 1950’s, Russian geneticist Dmitry K. Belyaev decided to domesticate the fox.  The purpose of this experiment was to replicate how wolves evolved into dogs during domestication.  Domestication is not the same thing as taming an animal.  Taming refers to a single animal, usually when a wild animal becomes accustomed to humans, and is a learned behavior.  Domestication happens over generations and is an inherited trait.

To get the first generation of foxes, Belyaev went to local fur farms in Siberia, Moscow, and Estonia.  The foxes were selected based on how they reacted around humans.  If they were aggressive, they stayed at the farm but if they were friendly, they were brought to Belyaev’s farm in Novosibirsk.  Most of the foxes at the fur farm were not tamed, since the only contact they had with humans was at meal times and when they left the farm.  Belyaev chose to pick from these farms because they would have an accurate genetic representation of the friendly trait.  100 vixens, or females, and 30 males were chosen.  When cubs were born, they would be hand-fed and were brought into lots of human contact.  The cubs that showed aggressive or evasive behavior were sent back to the fur farms.  In each generation, less than 10% of the cubs were allowed to reproduce.  Because of such a rigorous selection, almost all signs of aggression or evasion disappeared in about two or three generations.

This experiment also had unforeseen outcomes.  The foxes’ behavior changed drastically within just four generations.  The cubs began to act more like dogs.  They wagged their tails, sought human contact, whined, whimpered, and licked just like puppies.  Domestic foxes’ physical appearance also started to change.  They tend to have floppier ears, curlier tails, shorter legs, tail, snout, and upper jaw as well as a wider skull.

The discoveries from Belyaev’s experiment does not stop at foxes. It also raises questions about our own evolution.  One of the most important traits of our species is that we basically domesticated ourselves and became very social animals.  As a whole, we are much less aggressive and violent than chimpanzees, our closest relative.  It is possible that human evolution favored cooperation and gentleness, not intelligence as scientists originally thought.  Like the foxes, we may have been bred for friendliness and got smarter by accident.

Belyaev’s experiment continues today under the supervision of Belyaev’s apprentice, Lyudmila Trut, with about 270 domesticated vixens and 70 domesticated males.  You can get your pet fox through a company called the Lester Kalmanson Agency.  You just have to be willing to pay $9,000 to cover the shipping and handling from Siberia to Florida.  For a bit more, they will bring the fox to you.  There are four kinds of foxes you can order: the classic Red, the Silver/Black whose fur is all silvery black, the Platinum whose fur pattern resembles that of a Siberian Husky dog, or the Georgian White whose fur is all white with black ears and markings.  A few foxes have already come to the United States and have all been successful in their homes.  Maybe foxes will become the next great household pet, but for now scientists are still breeding and studying these incredible animals.