
A Soviet scientist created tame foxes - craneca0
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160912-a-soviet-scientist-created-the-only-tame-foxes-in-the-world
======
skosuri
About 4 years ago I gave a talk at a genomics conference in Novosibirsk. I
asked to go to this facility and it was super interesting. They were also
doing similar experiments on minks and a few other mammals. I was pretty
surprised on how few generations it took, and the physical features changed
pretty drastically as well. I'll see if I can dig up some old videos.

~~~
skosuri
Tamed mink (1)

Untamed mink (2)

Note the coat color change happened during selection.

Tame cute foxes (3)

Bred foxes (not for tameness) (4)

Excuse my shoddy camerawork.

(1)
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/9h5imx8kr3zrxe4/2012-06-28%2000.54...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/9h5imx8kr3zrxe4/2012-06-28%2000.54.43.mov?dl=0)

(2)
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/6sjenj5us94y2c8/2012-06-28%2000.50...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/6sjenj5us94y2c8/2012-06-28%2000.50.03.mov?dl=0)

(3)
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/6z0x1f60z2evvmy/2012-06-28%2000.26...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/6z0x1f60z2evvmy/2012-06-28%2000.26.23.mov?dl=0)

(4)
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/9o22yx9nk2pvfj8/2012-06-28%2000.36...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/9o22yx9nk2pvfj8/2012-06-28%2000.36.56.mov?dl=0)

~~~
_Adam
That tamed mink is absolutely relaxed. Such an animal would likely serve as an
excellent pet, but the regulatory and cultural obstacles are almost certainly
insurmountable.

Even genetic evolution moves faster than our regulatory system!

~~~
jahnu
Might be other problems though with a tame but undomesticated animal. Do they
smell bad? Can they control their bladders etc? Carry pests or other
undesirable bacteria etc?

~~~
ahoka
I think the only problem would be finding a vet who knows the species and
getting vaccinations.

~~~
giarc
Outside of dogs and cats, vaccinations are likely off label anyways. A vet
would say "This mink is 4kg, I'll give it the dosing for a 4kg cat."

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Gustomaximus
Great thinking point at the end:

"We always assume that intelligence is responsible for our success," says
Hare. "That humans became smarter, which… allowed us to invent wheels and
agriculture and iPhones. But what if that wasn't what happened?"

Hare suspects that, "like the foxes, and like dogs, we became friendlier
first, and then got smarter by accident. This would mean that our prosocial
skills, the skills that allow for cooperation and friendliness, were what made
us successful."

~~~
vacri
A dog with the intelligence of a human still has the problem of having no fine
manipulators (hands) with which to assist applying their intelligence on to
the world around them.

~~~
nikofeyn
i have often wondered if something like the orca has reached basically the
pinnacle of intelligence for an ocean-dwelling animal due to the restrictions
of being in water.

~~~
meric
I would note squid and octopus have fine manipulators (tentacles) and they are
relatively intelligent.

~~~
dharma1
I've often wondered if we had suitable computer-brain interfaces, could we
harness octopus brains to process various computational workloads. Like a
squishy co-processor

~~~
wuschel
_sarcasm on_

Don't forget, human brains are squishy, too, and there are many more of them!

 _Sarcasm off_

Not sure if your comment meant to be provocative, or if you just did not think
through the ethical considerations of your statement. In fact, I am not sure
how well protected octupus as a species are, since they lack a spine.

~~~
dharma1
I was half joking, but I think there is something to be said for biological
computation far beyond the capabilities of silicon, that we may be able to
ultimately harness with better BCIs (brain-computer interface). Imagine
Goldman Sachs running market predictions on huge banks of invertebrates hooked
up to neural network HFT algorithms, literally earning the name "vampire
squid" :)

I think the ethics of something like this is a very challenging area. Legally,
cephalopods already enjoy some protection in the EU against scientific
experiments that can cause pain - [http://eur-
lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2...](http://eur-
lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:276:0033:0079:EN:PDF)

However we readily eat squid and octopus, to the point of endangering them. We
breed chicken and other animals in factories, in the case of battery hen from
hatching to killing them in 72 weeks max (about 10% of their normal life
span), in often horrific conditions.

Would using octopuses be more ethical than chimps, since they lack a spine and
are genetically further from us? What if the octopuses were bred on a farm
instead of captured in the wild? What if instead of whole animals, just the
nervous system structures were grown in culture?

~~~
wuschel
Thank you for your reply, and making your position understandable. In my
humble opinion science has already a problem with communicating to the general
public.

We are still far away from the comprehension of state, or even computuation in
living tissue. The technology underlying silicium based computers is quite
primitive compared to biologics. Certainly - these are interesting thoughts in
theory - but for the sake of science communications with the general public I
am very careful in what context and what way I would articulate these
concepts.

Animal welfare, and the health of ecosystems, is definitely another minefield
of a discussion.

------
ptaipale
An almost unrelated anecdote, but I was touring Russia in a bus, and the old
lady in front of us had lived in Leningrad in the 1930's. Her father was a
dog-keeper for professor Ivan Pavlov.

The said father was an "enemy of the people" (Article 58) due to his
ethnicity, so he was allowed only second-rate jobs, but Pavlov and his dog
research had enough standing even during the Purges to protect the dog-keeper.
The daughter then survived Siege of Leningrad and later escaped to Finland,
ending up in the bus with us to tour the old places and tell her remarkable
story.

~~~
ABoldGambit
Can you elaborate on what you mean by being an "'enemy of the people' due to
his ethnicity"? I've studied a fair bit of Soviet law and never heard of
someone being targeted for their ethnicity specifically.

~~~
solong
as a russian, I'll try to clarify.

i believe there were two different concepts. the first one — an enemy of the
state, or enemy of the people (враг народа) — is not about ethnicity. it's
about "criminals" who deed horrible things to Soviet state and Soviet people.

some of these people were indeed criminals (although someone could argue that
their crimes are usually not so horrible, i.e. banal theft), some of them — a
lot, I think — were innocent.

enemy of the state/people was a working concept in 1930-1950s.

the second concept is about ethnicity. i don't know is there a name for it
though. all of the ethnicities in Soviet Russia were declared equal, USSR was
extremely anti-racist and anti-nationalist.

at the same time there were some nuances. for example, it was very hard to go
to the top university if you are a jew (or jewish? I don't want to cause
offence here). no one will tell you that you are not qualified because you are
jewish, but you won't be there anyway.

there were two reasons behind that. the first one: it was too dangerous to
give a good education to someone who could leave USSR for Israel later. the
second one is quite obvious, i think.

I don't know when it began but it was relatively difficult for jewish kids to
get to the top faculties of top universities even in 1980s. the same could be
said about top-secret research and some other areas.

~~~
ceejayoz
> all of the ethnicities in Soviet Russia were declared equal

So were all the people, but I'll wager the General Secretary of the Party had
a nicer apartment.

~~~
ptaipale
All were declared equal, but the General Secretary was declared more equal.

However, that's not the real problem. A society cannot work without some
economic and social inequality.

Taking large numbers of people in the early morning hours from their homes,
imprisoning and starving and shooting them in the back of the head and burying
them in a ditch, that is a problem, and the system that did this survived
until 1980's, and now Russia is increasingly nostalgic about it.

------
dnautics
When I was at JCVI we tried to negotiate a plan to do a full genome sequencing
of these foxes.

One of the more interesting discoveries - random piebaldness in animals
(holsteins, pintos, salt and pepper dogs & cats) is almost exclusively found
in domesticated animals and is probably related to genetic shifts in the
expression of enzymes used to make dopamine, which is also the chemical
precursor for melanin.

------
abrie
There was also a converse experiment: a population of dogs was un-domesticated
by breeding for a strong wild response. I don't have the exact reference, but
recollect that the process also took a remarkably low number of generations.

I wonder what sort of physical attributes/neurochemistry would develop in
increasingly wild populations of dogs.

~~~
nailer
This could have relevance to dog breeds originally selected for fighting or
baiting, then subsequently selected for companionship. Maybe if a fighting or
baiting dog is n generations into social breeding it can be considered safe?

~~~
grey413
Dogs are kind of a weird case, from an animal population standpoint. On one
hand, there are a ton of 'purebred' populations that undergo very specific
selection and which are fairly genetically isolated from the rest of the
species. These are your fighting dogs, your hunting dogs, your ratters, your
herders, your companions, etc etc. On the other, there's this huge pool of
castoffs and mutts, which aren't really undergoing any concerted deliberate
selection at all. However, the castoffs from the specific breed dogs are
constantly being shunted into the general population.

So to answer your question in that context: Yes, it would be more than
possible to take a population of dangerous fighting dogs and use them as the
base stock for a pet breed, provided that the breeding program was well
designed. However, the general mutt population will always have fighting dog
traits mixed into it so long as there are fighting breeds around.

------
hmsln
I remember reading an article about this in The Economist a few years ago.

The article stated that the tame fox specimen exhibited facial features that
were slightly different from those of wild foxes, and that the tamer they
were, the greater the differences were. Their jaws had become thinner, their
chins less pronouned, and their eyes larger. The article noted that it was
possible that these facial features were correlated with hormonal levels that
made the foxes less aggressive and more tame, and that the same could be true
in human beings.

Since human beings considers these facial features "attractive" in other human
beings, it was possible to conclude that we're hardwired to be physically
attracted to people whose facial features indicate a lower propensity to anger
and aggression.

I've looked for the article on google but I can't find it unfortunately.

~~~
jessriedel
> Their jaws had become thinner, their chins less pronouned, and their eyes
> larger. The article noted that it was possible that these facial features
> were correlated with hormonal levels that made the foxes less aggressive and
> more tame,

This is probably neoteny, which is considered a key part of the domestication
of dogs.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny#In_domestic_animals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny#In_domestic_animals)

> Some common neotenous physical traits in domesticated animals (mainly dogs,
> pigs, ferrets, cats, and even foxes) include: floppy ears, changes in
> reproductive cycle, curly tails, piebald coloration, fewer or shortened
> vertebra, large eyes, rounded forehead, large ears, and shortened muzzle.

For humans, neoteny is generally considered attractive in women.

------
acquacow
Been following this for a few years... more than tame foxes, they killed every
fox that didn't carry the specific traits they wanted.

~~~
Zyst
Right, the process never really claimed to "tame" foxes. It is an experiment
in selective breeding. Which as a goal aims to end up with domesticated foxes.

Selective breeding does mean that you take undesirables out of the gene pool,
in this case, turning them into fur to be sold which further funds the
experiment.

Maybe in 10 or 20 years when this is further along I would be interested in
seeing how a Fox would do as a pet.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
They make terrible pets because foxes mark their territory with a scent that
is extremely pungent. You basically have to have enough land to keep them
penned away from the home.

~~~
DasIch
I'd assume that this would be considered in the selective breeding process.

~~~
sperglord
Perhaps, but it wasn't mentioned in the article. I'd consider those kinds of
secondary things that breeders would work for once the primary goal has been
accomplished.

~~~
DasIch
This project has been going on for decades. If smell is a serious issue with
foxes, someone certainly brought that up and increasing the scope in this way
is rather obvious. In fact it's not really increasing the scope much at all
because if you're going for pets, clearly the smell issue needs to be solved.

The primary goal of showing that this can be done at all, apparently has also
been accomplished apparently decades ago. I can't imagine that they're not
already in the refinement stage.

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SixSigma
They didn't just breed tame ones, they also did the other half and bred
aggressive / psychotic ones too.

~~~
sushid
That doesn't seem to be case from the article. It seems like they were not
selected from the first generation of foxes to be domesticated, and for each
subsequent generations, the non-friendly ones were simply sold as fox pelts.

~~~
smallnamespace
[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mans-new-
best...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mans-new-best-friend-
a-forgotten-russian-experiment-in-fox-domestication/)

"Belyaev then began breeding a line of foxes with the opposite behavioral
traits, to be fearful and aggressive, using a similar method."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RypuiEOouZ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RypuiEOouZ0)

------
slacka
One of the first Americans to successfully import domestic foxes was video
game artist, Kay Fedewa. There's a fascinating interview of her experience
here: [https://www.flayrah.com/3998/interview-kay-fedewa-
domesticfo...](https://www.flayrah.com/3998/interview-kay-fedewa-
domesticfoxcom)

------
dandelion_lover
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10517631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10517631)
was about Wikipedia article
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Domesticated_Red_Fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Domesticated_Red_Fox)

------
anovikov
There is an urban legend in Russia about these tamed foxes that quality of fur
from them became a lot worse than from the wild ones, and thus all that
attempt is considered a failure: foxes can be domesticated, but become useless
as a result (originally it was done to reduce traumatism from bites on the fur
farms)

~~~
hansjorg
I've heard that was just the cover story, and the article seems to agree:

> The study of genetics had been essentially banned in the USSR, as the
> country's dictator Joseph Stalin sought to discredit the genetic principles
> set out by Gregor Mendel. Stalin's death in 1953 gave scientists more
> freedom, but in the early years Belyaev nevertheless worked under the cover
> that he was breeding foxes to make better fur coats.

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TheLarch
"The domesticated foxes had floppier, drooping ears, which are found in other
domestic animals such as dogs, cats, pigs, horses and goats."

I happened to recall the Origin of Species mentioning this: "Not a single
domestic animal can be named which has not in some country drooping ears."

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kriro
The hypothesis that (human) intelligence could very well be rooted in
prosocial behavior seems interesting. Too bad they turned the control group
into fur coats or they could have seen if the tame foxes are more intelligent
than the non-tame ones c.p.

[ethically extremely questionable research imo]

------
gnode
A more accurate title would be "A Soviet Scientist Created Domesticated
Foxes". Taming refers to making an animal accept humans by training, which is
a fairly common practise. What this scientist did was to create a domestic
breed by artificial selection.

------
efoto
There was also a great radiolab podcast a few years back on the same subject.

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/91696-new-
nice/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/91696-new-nice/)

------
louthy
I saw this covered first in the BBC documentary: The Secret Life of the Dog
[1]. If you can find a copy online then it's definitely worth watching; super
interesting.

[1]
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pssgh](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pssgh)

------
PKop
Here's a video about this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jFGNQScRNY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jFGNQScRNY)

------
satai
The colour change is pretty interesting - it an nice example of genes for
colours hitchhiking with the behavioral genes, that the foxes were selected
for.

