The silver fox domestication experiment
In 1959, a Russian geneticist in Siberia was interested in the domestication of wolves into dogs. To study the effects of domestication, he decided to use the silver fox. The experiment is still running after 65 years, and now they have domesticated silver foxes that have some physical characteristics of dogs.
Domestication Syndrome refers to physical changes to a species as it is bred for domestication. It’s a weird thing, and still not considered settled science.
In the silver fox experiment, animals were tested for tameness. The top 10% were selected to breed.
“Tameness” depends on the species and it’s temperament. It might be criteria like:
- How close can a person get before it turns away?
- How long does it take to approach a person for food?
- If it’s eating, how close can a person get before it responds?
It’s an experiment that’s been going on for 65 years, so the criteria evolves with the generations. Also, for other experiments, with chickens or mice for instance, the criteria is different. The breeding animals were chosen only for tameness.
The domestication syndrome produces physical characteristics like:
- Floppy ears: Reduced ear cartilage stiffness.
- Curled tails: Altered bone structure in the tail.
- Spotted or piebald coats: Reduced pigmentation due to changes in neural crest cells.
- Smaller teeth and skulls: Reduced jaw and skull size.
- Changes in brain size: Smaller brains in some domesticated animals.
The important part is that the foxes were not bred for any of that. They were chosen exclusively on their scores on tameness tests.
It’s an interesting phenomena, and this is just a brief summary. What you really want to see is how the wild and domesticated foxes look different. This site covers how the foxes have changed.
It’s a little tricky finding good online videos on the topic. On Youtube, many are just a minute or two long with no depth. On TikTok, there are a series of, “How to Tame a Silver Fox: Step-by-Step Guide”, but those don’t seem related to our topic and I’m not surrendering to the Chinese military to find out.
Here’s one I liked.
Russia’s Experiment Turned Wild Foxes Into Pet Dogs in 60 Years
Interesting topic.