In the fifties of the twentieth century, some Russians set up a crazy experiment: trying to breed the silver morph of red foxes to become domesticated. This is the experiment in extremely broad terms, but it really is what stuff comes down to. The results were sometimes quite interesting. This book details the backstory and some of the results of the experiment.
So the first thing to note when reading this book is to take it with a grain of salt. A lot of grains, actually. It's co-written by one of the project's main researchers, so it's obviously biased in favor of the experiment. Also, some of the results of the experiment have recently been found to have been exaggerated. An article on that can be found here, but I'll briefly touch on it in this review as well.
So the experiment pretty much went as follows: a group of a few hundred silver foxes from fur farms were brought to the experiment's location. From here on the most approachable (to humans) foxes were selected and bred. Then the most friendly foxes of their offspring were once again selected and mated in hopes of creating even tamer offspring. This then continued for generations to come.
The results of the experiment have been widely paraded. What ended up happening? After a few generations, the foxes started to show physical traits more associated with domestic animals such as dogs. This includes shorter and curlier tails, floppy ears, more white markings and shorter, rounder muzzles. And of course the behavior of these foxes became more tolerant (or even friendly) to humans as well, with some of them eventually being sold as pets.
These are the supposed results, however, like the article above mentions, it may not be all it's cracked up to be. First of all, the foxes used for the experiment came from fur farms, so to an extent they were already selectively bred to have certain traits, including sometimes already having piebald coats. It's not like they took a wild population of foxes and started breeding with them from there from square one, they were already selectively bred doing back to the nineteenth century.
And then there's the other mistake these people seem to make: thinking these silver foxes are already on the same level of "domesticatedness" as any dog. First of all, these foxes are not domesticated. They can be tame, but they're most certainly not domesticated. There is a difference between tame and domestic. Tame is when a wild animal has been accustomed to humans (e.g. a wild fox kit being taken in and raised by humans). Domestication is a long process in which a wild animal across generations adapts to be around humans, such as dogs, cats and horses.
Domestication is a process that takes many years, sometimes thousands. You can't just expect to have the same results in seventy years when it took us so long to domesticate dogs, cats and certain lifestock.
And then there's the aftermath of treating these foxes like they're the perfect pet: these still wild animals (albeit tame) being kept as pets. Foxes are not pets. They are not your dog. They are not your cat. They are not "dogs that act like cats." They, like wolves or any other wildlife, should be respected and treated as what they are: wild animals. Foxes are loud, smell, destroy everything and shit everywhere. They are not well-adjusted enough to be kept as pets and obviously just shouldn't be.
Even zoos or reputable rescues don't treat them like a pet but rather like a wild animal that needs its distance and habitat. They're not meant to be kept in your house, like with other exotic pets (e.g. snakes, certain birds). These foxes may be tame and have more tolerance for humans, but that doesn't make them domesticated or good pets.
The book in and of itself was written decently and I definitely learned more about the background and political climate surrounding the project, but you can't deny the fact that it's horribly biased and only trying to paint a pretty picture of the fox experiment. It's barely even brought up that they still sometimes cull their foxes to this day. Also, they made a weird mistake in describing these foxes as "snarling" multiple times. Anyone who knows the slightest thing about foxes knows that these animals do not snarl like wolves or dogs do. They're physically incapable of doing so. They can sneer but not snarl.
So if you want to learn some more context about the Russian silver fox experiment I guess you can check this one out, but always keep thinking critically about what you're reading and do more research beyond this book.
Rating: 2/5
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