Stories that include the words “Russia” and “animal science research” in the same sentence rarely have a lovely ending for the animals, but this story doesn’t come with a warning label. The tale of breeding- and more to the point, inbreeding- that morphed a wild animal into an emotional support vulpix doesn’t have too many bumps in the night.
But as with so many things from the Soviet Union, it’s not clear if the affair went as planned, it left us with a few questions, and some interesting mutants.
Today’s Moment of Science… In Soviet Russia, domestic fox ates YOU!
Domestication is loosely defined as ‘do you like wolves? Now there’s wolf2.0, it fits in your purse.’ TL;DR- humans decide ‘this is a good floof’ based on some combination of general usefulness, edibility, or being the cutest, goodest doggo. More docile animals who followed humans around for food would, generation by generation, bang out progressively friendlier, more pupper, less wolfy offspring. At the dawn of agriculture, animals and plants started being selectively bred by humans. By some combination of natural and selective breeding for certain traits to adapt to humans, domesticated genetic lineages are carved one generation at a time into something unique.
Domestication and taming are very different. Taming is an attempt to control the behavior of a wild animal, but they’re still wild with all those behavioral instincts just below the surface. Domestication creates housecats, taming created the tiger that ate Roy Horn’s face.
So, genetics in the USSR.
Born in 1917, Dmitry Belyaev was a Soviet geneticist whose career started in the early 1940s. This did not bode well for his ability to work freely while under the watchful eye of Stalin lackey and genetics denier, Trofim Lysenko. Belyaev worked at the Department of Fur Animal Breeding at the Central Research Laboratory in Moscow before and after his conscription to (literally) kill nazis in WWII. But for his refusal to disavow genetics, he was fired from this job. He continued studying genetics under the more acceptable guise of physiology research.
After the death of Stalin in 1953 it was a bit easier to sneak in some genetics work, but as long as Lysenko was around it was still a “for the love of your babushka don’t call it genetics” deal. In the late 1950s, Belyaev started work at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Siberia. And I’m not sure if going to Siberia was the only way to study genetics in the USSR at the time, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Hypothesizing that “all domesticated species had been selected for a single criterion: tameness,” Belayev set out to replicate that. Instead of rebuilding the dog from their wolfier counterparts, he decided to breed foxes using very strict protocols to measure for the most tame, docile animals. Typically less than 20% of foxes were deemed friendly enough for the next generation of the experiment.
Belyaev wasn’t so much interested in making a pet out of the fox, but he was curious about a phenomenon observed by Darwin later deemed ‘domestication syndrome.’ Along with whatever smattering of genetics you purposefully bequeathed Fluffy to create a human compatible danger cat, a curious collection of traits seemed to keep showing up in several domesticated animals. Curly tails, floppy ears, smaller teeth, more rounded heads, and spotted coats were some of the traits thought to be more likely to show up in the DIY version of a wee beastie.
After forty generations of foxes, they had a group of tame, friendly, curious foxes. As early as the sixth generation, a new ‘elite’ level of behavior was added to their evaluation as some foxes began whining for human attention, licking their handlers, and undoubtedly learning to give big sad eyes for treats. The proportion of elite animals shot from 35% in the 20th generation up to 70-80% in the 30th generation. Their ears were floppier, their tails were curled, and some were spotted. There were changes to the shape of their jaw, teeth, and skull that all tracked with domestication syndrome.
But… what if they already kinda domesticated?
Research published in 2019 suggested that the foxes used for research were taken from a Canadian fur farm and had already been selectively bred for their coat colors since the late 1800s. Whether or not they were bred for friendliness, there were reports that these foxes were already kinda friendly and had some of the features attributed to domestication in Canada before the study. It also examined domestication syndrome, and found that the group of morphological changes attributed to domestication are, at best, inconsistent.
So knowing this, what did Belyaev’s work give us? Some incredible insights and a lot of questions.
Belyaev’s experiments always stated that the animals were farm foxes, and those experiments have given us new insights into the genes that are connected to tameness and aggression. But did he domesticate a wild animal or continue domesticating one? How much of a difference does that even make for the experiment conclusions? It’s hard to say.
The 2019 paper criticizing Belyaev’s research is not without its controversy, with other researchers pointing out that it’s pretty normal for symptoms of domestication syndrome to be hit or miss. It’s hard to know when a group of animals makes an official jump from wild to domesticated. But the criticisms of the paper don’t strip it of all credibility. If anything, they’re a call for further research.
So. The big question. Should you get one as a pet?
No. Fucking no. Because whatever impression you have of the results of this, it’s not like they’ve bred a dog. This is a friendly fox. People who have adopted them report that they don’t house train so easily, and as much as they’re friendly, they don’t love you like a dog loves you. It took dogs about 20,000 years to get this weird quirk where they love us way more than we deserve, so maybe give domesticated foxes a few more generations before you expect anything more than a fox who occasionally tastes you without biting.
This has been you Moment of Science, absolutely sure some of y’all are looking up how to get one of these foxes already.
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