9 ms·

A Soviet scientist created tame foxes

221 points by craneca0 10y ago

abrie 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.
- a_bonobo 10y ago
  Australian Dingos maybe used to be (semi-)domesticated before they were introduced to Australia, originally having been bred in China, then gone 'wild' between 5000 and 18,000 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo#Origin_and_genetic_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo#Origin_and_genetic_statu...). There is some research into the genome on that page, but AFAIK there is no whole genome assembly yet. You can tame those but wild dingoes are very dangerous animals, as many Australian tourists can tell you. Zebras, on the other hand, are generally thought to be very hard to domesticate, with only a few successes of taming in the last hundred years, and zero success for domestication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra#Domestication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra#Domestication
efoto 10y ago
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/
Gustomaximus 10y ago
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."
- faitswulff 10y ago
  That, and there's some evidence that Neanderthals were physiologically actually smarter than early Homo Sepiens.
  - personjerry 10y ago
    Do you have a source for this?
    - bpodgursky 10y ago
      The cranial cavities are definitely larger, although it's ambiguous whether that just means better vision. No source on me, but it's not hard to find.
      - Gustomaximus 10y ago
        I had a quick googlefu about this (note quick). The articles I found seemed speculative and nothing concrete to show Neanderthals were smarter. Mainly showing they were more similar to us in tools/clothes but nothing to indicate more advanced/smarter.
    - faitswulff 10y ago
      I forgot to link to what I was thinking of: https://www.quora.com/Were-the-Neanderthals-smarter-than-the-members-of-Homo-sapiens https://www.quora.com/Were-the-Neanderthals-smarter-than-the... Although I had heard speculations of the sort through more reputable sources, I just can't find it at the moment.
PKop 10y ago
Here's a video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jFGNQScRNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jFGNQScRNY
slacka 10y ago
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-domesticfoxcom https://www.flayrah.com/3998/interview-kay-fedewa-domesticfo...
skosuri 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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%2000.54.43.mov?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/9h5imx8kr3zrxe4/2012-06-28%2000.54... (2) https://www.dropbox.com/s/6sjenj5us94y2c8/2012-06-28%2000.50.03.mov?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/6sjenj5us94y2c8/2012-06-28%2000.50... (3) https://www.dropbox.com/s/6z0x1f60z2evvmy/2012-06-28%2000.26.23.mov?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/6z0x1f60z2evvmy/2012-06-28%2000.26... (4) https://www.dropbox.com/s/9o22yx9nk2pvfj8/2012-06-28%2000.36.56.mov?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/9o22yx9nk2pvfj8/2012-06-28%2000.36...
  - _Adam 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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 10y ago
        I think the only problem would be finding a vet who knows the species and getting vaccinations.
SixSigma 10y ago
They didn't just breed tame ones, they also did the other half and bred aggressive / psychotic ones too.
- corndoge 10y ago
  Source please
  - SixSigma 10y ago
    The same BBC documentary
- sushid 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mans-new-best-friend-a-forgotten-russian-experiment-in-fox-domestication/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mans-new-best... "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
acquacow 10y ago
Been following this for a few years... more than tame foxes, they killed every fox that didn't carry the specific traits they wanted.
- grey413 10y ago
  Culling non-desirable stock is an important tool in any breeding program. The essence of evolution is replacement, after all.
- Tinyyy 10y ago
  It says so in the article. >If the cubs continued to show aggressive or evasive responses, even after significant human contact, they were discarded from the population – meaning they were made into fur coats.
- userbinator 10y ago
  I suppose you could call it "unnatural selection", but it works on the same principles as Darwin's, only accelerated.
  - andrewchambers 10y ago
    I don't think humans are outside nature, it's a curious symbiotic relationship though.
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      That might be very true, but then the information content of the word 'natural' drops mostly to zero. Since languages tend to drop words when that happens, we would need to find another word that conveys what natural means today -- at which point, why not just use the word as it is?
      - jdavis703 10y ago
        The word "natural" is a misnomer. For example you can buy "natural" fruit, despite the fact that a farmer planted and raised the plant, a chemist invented the chemicals used for pesticide, and a truck brought them to your farmers market. And of course all these things arose from natural systems being modified by us homo sapiens. Perhaps it's better to refer to things as person-made (or man-made if you must), to avoid the ambiguity of the word natural.
anovikov 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
ptaipale 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
  - twelvechairs 10y ago
    Not OP but the following describes for several ethnic groups https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_Soviet_Union
  - WilliamDhalgren 10y ago
    I don't know the answer, but there was an antisemitic campaign after the war (eg 52' Night of the Murdered Poets, campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans" etc). Shostakovich Symphony No.13 (Babi Yar) and the poem there used, Yevtushenko's Babiyy Yar was a protest of both soviet antisemitism and the government's refusal to recognise the site as a holocaust location (Jewish identity of the victims being denied; they were generalized as Soviet instead), even in the early 60s.
    - lostlogin 10y ago
      Also, and perversely ironically, the death of Stalin had a twist where a lot of the Jewish medical doctors had been implicated in a plot and therefore weren't readily available when Stalin fell ill. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_plot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_plot
louthy 10y ago
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
hmsln 10y ago
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 10y ago
  > 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.
- chengiz 10y ago
  Instead of remembering/finding that article perhaps you should just read the posted article which mentions the same things about "cuter" facial features.
- gerty 10y ago
  This is probably the article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/08/domesticated-animals http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/08/domesticated-...
dnautics 10y ago
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.
dandelion_lover 10y ago
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
gnode 10y ago
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.
kriro 10y ago
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]
satai 10y ago
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.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
TheLarch 10y ago
"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."

221 points by craneca0 10y ago

abrie 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
a_bonobo 10y ago
Australian Dingos maybe used to be (semi-)domesticated before they were introduced to Australia, originally having been bred in China, then gone 'wild' between 5000 and 18,000 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo#Origin_and_genetic_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo#Origin_and_genetic_statu...). There is some research into the genome on that page, but AFAIK there is no whole genome assembly yet. You can tame those but wild dingoes are very dangerous animals, as many Australian tourists can tell you. Zebras, on the other hand, are generally thought to be very hard to domesticate, with only a few successes of taming in the last hundred years, and zero success for domestication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra#Domestication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra#Domestication

efoto 10y ago

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/

Gustomaximus 10y ago

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."

faitswulff 10y ago
That, and there's some evidence that Neanderthals were physiologically actually smarter than early Homo Sepiens.
- personjerry 10y ago
  Do you have a source for this?
  - bpodgursky 10y ago
    The cranial cavities are definitely larger, although it's ambiguous whether that just means better vision. No source on me, but it's not hard to find.
    - Gustomaximus 10y ago
      I had a quick googlefu about this (note quick). The articles I found seemed speculative and nothing concrete to show Neanderthals were smarter. Mainly showing they were more similar to us in tools/clothes but nothing to indicate more advanced/smarter.
  - faitswulff 10y ago
    I forgot to link to what I was thinking of: https://www.quora.com/Were-the-Neanderthals-smarter-than-the-members-of-Homo-sapiens https://www.quora.com/Were-the-Neanderthals-smarter-than-the... Although I had heard speculations of the sort through more reputable sources, I just can't find it at the moment.

PKop 10y ago

Here's a video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jFGNQScRNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jFGNQScRNY

slacka 10y ago

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-domesticfoxcom https://www.flayrah.com/3998/interview-kay-fedewa-domesticfo...

skosuri 10y ago

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 10y ago
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%2000.54.43.mov?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/9h5imx8kr3zrxe4/2012-06-28%2000.54... (2) https://www.dropbox.com/s/6sjenj5us94y2c8/2012-06-28%2000.50.03.mov?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/6sjenj5us94y2c8/2012-06-28%2000.50... (3) https://www.dropbox.com/s/6z0x1f60z2evvmy/2012-06-28%2000.26.23.mov?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/6z0x1f60z2evvmy/2012-06-28%2000.26... (4) https://www.dropbox.com/s/9o22yx9nk2pvfj8/2012-06-28%2000.36.56.mov?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/9o22yx9nk2pvfj8/2012-06-28%2000.36...
- _Adam 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      I think the only problem would be finding a vet who knows the species and getting vaccinations.

SixSigma 10y ago

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

corndoge 10y ago
Source please
- SixSigma 10y ago
  The same BBC documentary
sushid 10y ago
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 10y ago
  http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mans-new-best-friend-a-forgotten-russian-experiment-in-fox-domestication/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mans-new-best... "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

acquacow 10y ago

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

grey413 10y ago
Culling non-desirable stock is an important tool in any breeding program. The essence of evolution is replacement, after all.
Tinyyy 10y ago
It says so in the article. >If the cubs continued to show aggressive or evasive responses, even after significant human contact, they were discarded from the population – meaning they were made into fur coats.
userbinator 10y ago
I suppose you could call it "unnatural selection", but it works on the same principles as Darwin's, only accelerated.
- andrewchambers 10y ago
  I don't think humans are outside nature, it's a curious symbiotic relationship though.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    That might be very true, but then the information content of the word 'natural' drops mostly to zero. Since languages tend to drop words when that happens, we would need to find another word that conveys what natural means today -- at which point, why not just use the word as it is?
    - jdavis703 10y ago
      The word "natural" is a misnomer. For example you can buy "natural" fruit, despite the fact that a farmer planted and raised the plant, a chemist invented the chemicals used for pesticide, and a truck brought them to your farmers market. And of course all these things arose from natural systems being modified by us homo sapiens. Perhaps it's better to refer to things as person-made (or man-made if you must), to avoid the ambiguity of the word natural.

anovikov 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.

ptaipale 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.
- twelvechairs 10y ago
  Not OP but the following describes for several ethnic groups https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_Soviet_Union
- WilliamDhalgren 10y ago
  I don't know the answer, but there was an antisemitic campaign after the war (eg 52' Night of the Murdered Poets, campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans" etc). Shostakovich Symphony No.13 (Babi Yar) and the poem there used, Yevtushenko's Babiyy Yar was a protest of both soviet antisemitism and the government's refusal to recognise the site as a holocaust location (Jewish identity of the victims being denied; they were generalized as Soviet instead), even in the early 60s.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    Also, and perversely ironically, the death of Stalin had a twist where a lot of the Jewish medical doctors had been implicated in a plot and therefore weren't readily available when Stalin fell ill. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_plot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_plot

louthy 10y ago

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

hmsln 10y ago

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 10y ago
> 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.
chengiz 10y ago
Instead of remembering/finding that article perhaps you should just read the posted article which mentions the same things about "cuter" facial features.
gerty 10y ago
This is probably the article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/08/domesticated-animals http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/08/domesticated-...

dnautics 10y ago

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.

dandelion_lover 10y ago

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

gnode 10y ago

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.

kriro 10y ago

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]

satai 10y ago

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.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

TheLarch 10y ago

"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."