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Russian scientists have created a breed of domesticated foxes (costs $6K)
- lbolognini 16y agoBeautiful animals. But i'd rather get a Czechoslovakian wolfdog.
- nphase 16y agoFoxes are beautiful creatures. Not sure why they picked the ugliest ones to showcase.
- jacquesm 16y agoAncient hunters have created a breed of domesticated wolves/dingos, cost $100 or less in countries where they're subsidised at your nearby humane society. edit: updated for a less euro-centric view. Thanks araneae
- gwern 16y agoYeah, but they don't look like these. (Also, I suppose a small fraction of the money goes to support their IMO interesting research. Which is approximately infinite percent more for a charitable cause than from the price of a designer cat or dog.)
- jacquesm 16y agoAgreed, they're beautiful animals. You can actually befriend foxes in the wild near your home relatively easily if you are patient. I'd be very wary of letting one of them (or one of the 'tame' ones above) near very young children though. Dogs have been bred for many thousands of generations and yet there still are plenty of them that bear careful watching in spite of being tame, with these animals I'd be extra careful, their roots are much more wild than any regular dog you'll ever meet. The brother of one of my ex employees in Canada had a half-wolf, half Sheppard. An absolutely amazing animal but imprinted on one person only, dog to him, wolf to the rest of the world. I imagine these foxes to be much more tame than their wild cousins but until you've seen them in stressful situations you'd have to be careful with individual specimen, even if as a breed they're considered tame enough for being around the house. The same goes for dogs. In Australia there are people that hold dingos as pets, that's another interesting option.
- dmm 16y ago> Dogs have been bred for many thousands of generations Dogs have been bred for many purposes: to be attractive, to be aggressive, to herd, to hunt. These foxes have been bred exclusively for tameness. The starting stock were semi-domesticated fur foxes. These foxes are far from wild animals.
- jacquesm 16y agoAll dogs are still (technically, I'd hate to think of the logistics in some cases) interbreedable, no speciation has occurred over all those thousands of generations. Dogs and wolves can still interbreed and the resulting offspring is fertile. So, technically, dogs are 'tame wolves'. These foxes are much closer to their wild roots, it's great they've been bred for tameness (a much better trait to select for than beauty or some other peripheral trait, which might come at a cost, because beauty is subjective and you can easily get side-effects when selecting for it) but even so I'd be pretty careful. Until there are 1000's of these animals out there that have been subjected to all kinds of situations you'll be in uncharted territory, no matter what the breeding was initially for. Another risk is that if these become more popular that less experienced money oriented breeders will try to get in on the market and will re-introduce bad traits because it's more profitable to use all animals as breeding stock in stead of the ones with the more desirable trait. This sort of thing has come close to destroying the reputation of quite a few dog breeds.
- joubert 16y agoCreating bulldogs wasn't very humane.
- jacquesm 16y agoLike any tool, hybridisation can be used for good and for bad.
- araneae 16y agoActually, they usually cost around $100 at most shelters. They have to recoup the spay/neuter costs some how.
- jacquesm 16y agoThat was my myopic me speaking, he's been spanked and won't be let out for the rest of the day. Thanks for the correction.
- Nekojoe 16y agoI remember seeing a documentary about these foxes last year. IIRC they were part of a science experiment to see if it was nature or nurture that was the key factor in the domestication of dogs. Basically with each litter of foxes they selected the most friendly, and allowed them to breed, creating more friendly / domesticated foxes. They also selected the most vicious and bred them separately as a control. Later when the behaviours became more pronounced they artificially inseminated the vicious foxes with the domesticated foxes embryos to find out if they would be aggressive or domestic. They turned out to be domestic. Interestingly because foxes are solitary animals they behave more like cats than dogs.
- dlokshin 16y agoDomestication in less than a half century. That's pretty incredible.
- jacquesm 16y agoNo, it's pretty much the norm. It's been done several times with dingos to prove the point about how rapidly the 'dog' entered our lives.
- hugh3 16y agoThe dingo must have already been at least somewhat domesticated when it was brought to Australia (4-12,000 years ago, later than the first humans) because nobody is going to cross a 50 km strait in a canoe/raft/boat with a wild dog. Presumably they went wild again afterwards, but it must be easier to re-domesticate a dog that was domesticated a few thousand years ago than to domesticate an entirely new species.
- jacquesm 16y agoGood point, I hadn't thought of that. Was it brought there or did it raft there by itself ? (that's not a joke, plenty of animals have been involuntarily moved between continents on makeshift rafts) The dingo is a fascinating creature.
- gaius 16y agoThese are not the usual kind of Siberian Foxes one finds on the Internet... ;)
- gus_massa 16y agoVideo with the foxs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enrLSfxTqZ0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enrLSfxTqZ0
- chopsueyar 16y agoIs that John Lithgow narrating?
- Oompa 16y agoIt certainly sounds like it.
- joubert 16y agoThey sell neutered pups only. Artificial scarcity.
- mootothemax 16y agoTheir FAQ says: All foxes come neutered. It is illegal to breed Sibirian tame foxes bought from Siberian farm. I'd love to know if that's true, or if it's some hell-bent crazy interpretation of IP laws.
- ars 16y agoIt's neither - it's wishful thinking. They hope if they say it people will believe them.
- electromagnetic 16y agoTrue, but it's better than some redneck retard seeing an opportunity and buying a male and female and inbreeding them to make $3000 a pop until they turn viscous, like German Shepherds, Golden Retrievers, etc. I know they're doing this to keep their profit artificially high, however I'd rather someone be making $6000 selling healthy well cared for animals rather than see idiots abusing animals because they're a new novelty. I own exotic pets and I've heard true horror stories of people buying sick pets, I'd hate to see that happening with a new species. I'd love it if the domestic fox could be the one domesticated species we don't bastardize over sheer greed.
- ks 16y agoPerhaps they want to keep domesticated foxes away from the rest of the ecosystem? Even if they are relatively close to other foxes, there are probably differences that may result in unfortunate consequences.
- JacobAldridge 16y agoMost particularly hybrids that look domestic and cuddly with their floppy ears, but will still eat your chickens or bite your kid's face.
- chopsueyar 16y agoI'd rather go for a fennec. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXp9RyBzsSI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXp9RyBzsSI
- tomjen3 16y agoNow all I have to do is get a startup to sell, then I can get a pet that nobody in my family is allergic to. Great.
- dailo10 16y agoIf you want a dog that looks (and sometimes acts) like a fox, check out the Shiba Inu. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=shiba+inu http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...
- gamble 16y agoI tried to contact these people about a year ago, but never received a response. Couldn't find any evidence that they've ever imported a fox for anyone else, either. They may not be a going concern.
- ars 16y agoTalk about DRM - they are neutered!
- Psyonic 16y agoWhile this is interesting for a scientific point of view, I really hope these don't become popular in the US. The last thing we need is another "cute" animal that gets over-bred. Visit your local humane society and see how well thats working out for cats and dogs.
- brc 16y agoYeah, if I were a politician I'd be heading this one off at the pass and banning it before it became popular. The last thing the world needs is another designer pet. Sure, do scientific research but don't release these things on the world. This can only end badly for everyone involved, the foxes, the owners, children and various native species in the vicinity of the adopting home.
- socram2k 16y agoFoxes spread a horrible smell, most people don't know because they've never been next to a fox and they think they will smell like a cat or a dog(wich also smell but it isn't comparable)