Chrissy And Joachim: Domesticated Foxes.

Shanghai. Style. Sharks?

Domesticated Foxes.

I was reading my psychology book and found a passage about Russian scientists domesticating foxes. I like foxes a lot. They are so shiny and cute. My insides get happy when I see them on TV, by the side of the road, wherever. So the article caught my attention.

Dimitry Belyaev wanted to test natural selection and breed a line of tame foxes; the ultimate goal was to parallel his study with our ancient ancestors who domesticated wolves. So. Belyaev started working with 30 male and 100 female foxes, breeding them and taking 5% of the tamest male offspring and 20% of the tamest female offspring.

Tameness was measured through the foxes responses towards feeding, stroking and handling.

30 years and 45,000 foxes the out come is a "docile, eager to please and unmistakably domesticated" (Trut, 1999) fox. They are "so eager for human contact" they "whimper to attract attention and lick people like affectionate cats" (Meyers, pg. 108).

This got me excited. My book state that the foxes were being marketed as pets. I wouldn't want a fox for a pet. That would be cruel. But I wanted to investigate further. And the topic made me so so happy.

However, my happiness didn't last too long. From 1997 to 1998, the project lost funding. Out of the 700 domesticated foxes, 600 were put down. Even worse, while the books claimed that the foxes can be and are sold off as pets, in reality they were domesticated for fur farms. Which honestly, just takes their slaughter to new levels of inhumanity, equated to killing off pet dogs for their pelts.