In 1959, biologist Dmitry Belyaev of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Russian Academy of Science in Novosi- birsk, Russia began to selectively breed silver foxes based on behavior and tolerance to human interaction. By the mid 1960's scientists began to notice that a group of foxes were exhibiting what is usually associated with modern domesticated dog behavior. In order to test whether these changes in behavior were based on genetics or nurture researchers began a cross-upbringing programs where the tame kits were placed with undomesticated mothers and vice versa. Only to find the adoptive mother had very little influence on the kit's behavior towards humans. One of the most interesting things that the project has discovered is that when merely selecting tameness they also began to see the phenotypic changes generally associated with domesticated species: such as: floppy ears, curlier tails, and much more juvenile features than it's wild progenitors.
Dan Child/©BBC
Dr. Lyudmila Trut, who was a graduate student when the experiment, current director of the program is pictured here with one of the domesticated foxes.
References
1. Kukekova AV, Temnykh SV, Johnson JL, Trut LN, Acland GM
(2012) Genetics of behavior in the silver fox. Mamm Genome 23(1–2):164–177
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