7 ms·

Belyayev's Fox Experiment

109 points by deogeo 7y ago

rossdavidh 7y ago
The woman who took over the experiment after Belyayev died wrote a book about if a few years back: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2116251372 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2116251372
walrus01 7y ago
Short documentary from a few years ago: https://youtu.be/4dwjS_eI-lQ https://youtu.be/4dwjS_eI-lQ
ronilan 7y ago
This is a horribly edited Wikipedia article yet it is such a delight to read.
- deogeo 7y ago
  I think https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mans-new-best-friend-a-forgotten-russian-experiment-in-fox-domestication/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mans-new-bes... has much of the same content, and might be easier to read.
sillysaurusx 7y ago
An interesting aspect of this experiment often overlooked: the same process influences us. The way that we behave in a corporate setting seems closely related to domestication. It would be worth examining the traits associated with animal domestication and compare them to human behavior in a variety of contexts. It's not really a happy thought that we're domesticated, but power structures exist, and it's in most of our genetics to serve. It's often possible to trace certain types of ambition to a young age, for example. It would be neat to see a more rigorous exploration of whether it's true that humans are domesticated, and if so, how much, and what it means in a precise way.
- leftyted 7y ago
  Human reproduction is based on choices made by individual men and women. "Corporate setting" or not, no central authority is selecting us for mating based on some characteristic. With domesticated animals, often a stud is selected and can have hundreds of offspring. For example, all border collies are related to a single dog (Old Hemp). There's no comparison to humans.
  - sillysaurusx 7y ago
    Many of us seem to be related to Genghis Khan: https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/1-in-200-men-d... For me, the question of human domestication goes beyond breeding choices. We are often a product of our genetics. But once we have those genetics, what then? Can societal structures influence behavior in the same direction of animal domestication? And if not, what’s the crucial distinction, since animal domestication seems closely related to many human behaviors we see today?
  - doitLP 7y ago
    Imagine the strong selective pressure as humans moved to larger social groups and agrarian societies. These were ruled by strongmen interested above all else in most cases in collecting the highest taxes from a compliant population. Anyone too fierce, fearful or combative would be ostracized at best, killed at worst. Even today, prisons and mental institutions are filled with non-conformist, anti-social people who in many cases are not allowed to reproduce.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      OTOH, "undomesticated" males tend to be good as generating more offspring with diverse partners than "domesticated" ones with 2.5 children.
  - csours 7y ago
    Human self-domestication is certainly widely discussed: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180215110041.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180215110041.h...
oriettaxx 7y ago
I was expecting much more content about the implications of these results on humans are we domesticated our-self? how does society (morals, e.g.) acts as Belyayev selection?
- burfog 7y ago
  Relating it to humans gets far more awkward than you might guess. Ponder any implications of what Wikipedia dares to say about the matter: The changes manifested by the tame foxes over the generations, moreover, were not only behavioral but also physiological, just as Belyayev had expected. The first physiological change detected in the tame foxes was a lower adrenaline level. Belyayev and his team "theorized that adrenaline might share a biochemical pathway with melanin, which controls pigment production in fur", a hypothesis that has since been confirmed by research.[2] As they became tamer, more and more of the foxes began showing "signs of the domestication phenotype"; Trut later recalled that in the early 1980s "we observed a kind of explosion-like change of the external appearance."[5] After eight to ten generations, the tame foxes began to develop particolored coats, a trait found more in domesticated animals than in wild ones Belyayev's experimental animals and their descendants have been said to "form an unparalleled resource for studying the process and genetics of domestication".[1] Brian Hare, a biological anthropologist, wanted to study "the unusual ability of dogs to understand human gestures". Hare "wanted to know if dogs' powerful rapport with humans was a quality that the original domesticators of the dog had selected for, or whether it had just come along with the tameness, as implied by Belyaev's hypothesis". He discovered "that the fox kits from Belyaev's domesticated stock did just as well as puppies in picking up cues from people about hidden food, even though they had almost no previous experience with humans."[1] In a 2005 paper for Current Biology, Hare suggested that selection for tameness "may have been sufficient to produce the unusual ability of dogs to use human communicative gestures" and that the inability of wild wolves to pick up human cues is caused by their fear of humans. While Belyayev and his team "didn't select for a smarter fox but for a nice fox", Hare said, "they ended up getting a smart fox." Belyayev's research, Hare further argues, has implications for the origins of human social behavior: "Are we domesticated in the sense of dogs? No. But I am comfortable saying that the first thing that has to happen to get a human from an apelike ancestor is a substantial increase in tolerance toward one another. There had to be a change in our social system."[5]
zone411 7y ago
A 2017 study showed that hypersocial dogs have structural changes in genes responsible for Williams-Beuren syndrome in humans. It speculates that this is what might have allowed domestication. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700398 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700398 https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/williams-syndrome https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/williams-syndrome
mNovak 7y ago
A handful of websites claim to offer pups from this specific colony as pets, which sounds wonderful. Though it's hard to validate they weren't just taken from a fur farm (thus not actually tame).
mkl 7y ago
We've discussed this a few times on HN, but old discussions are a bit hard to search for. Here are a couple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10517631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10517631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12493059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12493059
fnwk 7y ago
There has been some doubt about the validity of this experiment [1]: "A widespread misconception maintains that the Farm-Fox Experiment started with wild foxes and recapitulated the entire process of domestication. Belyaev himself accurately described the founders as fur-farm foxes, but by referring to the unselected population as ‘wild controls’, contributed to this misconception. In reality, the experiment started with a fox population from eastern Canada that had been captive and purpose-bred since the late 1800s, something Belyaev and his colleagues may have been initially unaware of." [1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.10.011 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.10.011
- deogeo 7y ago
  Even so, the change in behavior seems genuine, when compared to what it was initially. The experimental fault also seems easy to fix - just compare behavior to other fur-farm foxes, instead of wild ones.
  - fnwk 7y ago
    The experiment specifically selected for behaviour, though. And the fur-farm foxes seem to have been quite tame already before the start of the experiment. Therefore, I don't find the changes in behaviour very interesting on their own [1]: "The Farm-Fox Experiment selected for a behavioral trait that already existed in the population (Figure 3), essentially recapitulating a selection experiment performed on numerous occasions with dog breeds. [...] The change in the critical period of socialization in the selected foxes is more like the difference between more and less easily socialized dog breeds than between dogs and wolves." [1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.10.011 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.10.011
    - brabel 7y ago
      I don't really understand this rebutal... the change in behaviour from the initial population (even if it had already been partially domesticated) was not just interesting, it was absolutely amazing. You can check for yourself how the foxes brought to the US behave on Youtube[1]! Also, the similar study with mice[2] by the same Russian Institute seems to have had even more striking results. The rebutal seems to be using only theoretical objections, without any new original, empirical findings, to counteract tangible evidence that had been accepted by (and astonished) numerous other researchers who actually came into contact with the animals. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dwjS_eI-lQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dwjS_eI-lQ [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/health/25rats.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/health/25rats.html
superpermutat0r 7y ago
The experiment is not designed well. I would guess that the tameness comes from the non stimulating environment more than the process of selection. It is known that mother imprints a lot of hormonal/stress activities to children while pregnant. Just like starving pregnant mothers have an effect on generations that come through hormonal gene activation similar thing happens to animals in wilderness. Is there a line of foxes bread for generations in captivity with purely random selection?
- deogeo 7y ago
  I believe Belyayev had a control group, yes.
  - superpermutat0r 7y ago
    Still, the nature of the control group might have a smaller taming effect needing longer time to turn into tame.

109 points by deogeo 7y ago

The woman who took over the experiment after Belyayev died wrote a book about if a few years back: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2116251372 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2116251372

walrus01 7y ago

Short documentary from a few years ago: https://youtu.be/4dwjS_eI-lQ https://youtu.be/4dwjS_eI-lQ

ronilan 7y ago

This is a horribly edited Wikipedia article yet it is such a delight to read.

deogeo 7y ago
I think https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mans-new-best-friend-a-forgotten-russian-experiment-in-fox-domestication/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/mans-new-bes... has much of the same content, and might be easier to read.

sillysaurusx 7y ago

An interesting aspect of this experiment often overlooked: the same process influences us. The way that we behave in a corporate setting seems closely related to domestication. It would be worth examining the traits associated with animal domestication and compare them to human behavior in a variety of contexts. It's not really a happy thought that we're domesticated, but power structures exist, and it's in most of our genetics to serve. It's often possible to trace certain types of ambition to a young age, for example. It would be neat to see a more rigorous exploration of whether it's true that humans are domesticated, and if so, how much, and what it means in a precise way.

leftyted 7y ago
Human reproduction is based on choices made by individual men and women. "Corporate setting" or not, no central authority is selecting us for mating based on some characteristic. With domesticated animals, often a stud is selected and can have hundreds of offspring. For example, all border collies are related to a single dog (Old Hemp). There's no comparison to humans.
- sillysaurusx 7y ago
  Many of us seem to be related to Genghis Khan: https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/1-in-200-men-d... For me, the question of human domestication goes beyond breeding choices. We are often a product of our genetics. But once we have those genetics, what then? Can societal structures influence behavior in the same direction of animal domestication? And if not, what’s the crucial distinction, since animal domestication seems closely related to many human behaviors we see today?
- doitLP 7y ago
  Imagine the strong selective pressure as humans moved to larger social groups and agrarian societies. These were ruled by strongmen interested above all else in most cases in collecting the highest taxes from a compliant population. Anyone too fierce, fearful or combative would be ostracized at best, killed at worst. Even today, prisons and mental institutions are filled with non-conformist, anti-social people who in many cases are not allowed to reproduce.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    OTOH, "undomesticated" males tend to be good as generating more offspring with diverse partners than "domesticated" ones with 2.5 children.
- csours 7y ago
  Human self-domestication is certainly widely discussed: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180215110041.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180215110041.h...

oriettaxx 7y ago

I was expecting much more content about the implications of these results on humans are we domesticated our-self? how does society (morals, e.g.) acts as Belyayev selection?

burfog 7y ago
Relating it to humans gets far more awkward than you might guess. Ponder any implications of what Wikipedia dares to say about the matter: The changes manifested by the tame foxes over the generations, moreover, were not only behavioral but also physiological, just as Belyayev had expected. The first physiological change detected in the tame foxes was a lower adrenaline level. Belyayev and his team "theorized that adrenaline might share a biochemical pathway with melanin, which controls pigment production in fur", a hypothesis that has since been confirmed by research.[2] As they became tamer, more and more of the foxes began showing "signs of the domestication phenotype"; Trut later recalled that in the early 1980s "we observed a kind of explosion-like change of the external appearance."[5] After eight to ten generations, the tame foxes began to develop particolored coats, a trait found more in domesticated animals than in wild ones Belyayev's experimental animals and their descendants have been said to "form an unparalleled resource for studying the process and genetics of domestication".[1] Brian Hare, a biological anthropologist, wanted to study "the unusual ability of dogs to understand human gestures". Hare "wanted to know if dogs' powerful rapport with humans was a quality that the original domesticators of the dog had selected for, or whether it had just come along with the tameness, as implied by Belyaev's hypothesis". He discovered "that the fox kits from Belyaev's domesticated stock did just as well as puppies in picking up cues from people about hidden food, even though they had almost no previous experience with humans."[1] In a 2005 paper for Current Biology, Hare suggested that selection for tameness "may have been sufficient to produce the unusual ability of dogs to use human communicative gestures" and that the inability of wild wolves to pick up human cues is caused by their fear of humans. While Belyayev and his team "didn't select for a smarter fox but for a nice fox", Hare said, "they ended up getting a smart fox." Belyayev's research, Hare further argues, has implications for the origins of human social behavior: "Are we domesticated in the sense of dogs? No. But I am comfortable saying that the first thing that has to happen to get a human from an apelike ancestor is a substantial increase in tolerance toward one another. There had to be a change in our social system."[5]

zone411 7y ago

A 2017 study showed that hypersocial dogs have structural changes in genes responsible for Williams-Beuren syndrome in humans. It speculates that this is what might have allowed domestication. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700398 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700398 https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/williams-syndrome https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/williams-syndrome

mNovak 7y ago

A handful of websites claim to offer pups from this specific colony as pets, which sounds wonderful. Though it's hard to validate they weren't just taken from a fur farm (thus not actually tame).

mkl 7y ago

We've discussed this a few times on HN, but old discussions are a bit hard to search for. Here are a couple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10517631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10517631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12493059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12493059

fnwk 7y ago

There has been some doubt about the validity of this experiment [1]: "A widespread misconception maintains that the Farm-Fox Experiment started with wild foxes and recapitulated the entire process of domestication. Belyaev himself accurately described the founders as fur-farm foxes, but by referring to the unselected population as ‘wild controls’, contributed to this misconception. In reality, the experiment started with a fox population from eastern Canada that had been captive and purpose-bred since the late 1800s, something Belyaev and his colleagues may have been initially unaware of." [1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.10.011 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.10.011

deogeo 7y ago
Even so, the change in behavior seems genuine, when compared to what it was initially. The experimental fault also seems easy to fix - just compare behavior to other fur-farm foxes, instead of wild ones.
- fnwk 7y ago
  The experiment specifically selected for behaviour, though. And the fur-farm foxes seem to have been quite tame already before the start of the experiment. Therefore, I don't find the changes in behaviour very interesting on their own [1]: "The Farm-Fox Experiment selected for a behavioral trait that already existed in the population (Figure 3), essentially recapitulating a selection experiment performed on numerous occasions with dog breeds. [...] The change in the critical period of socialization in the selected foxes is more like the difference between more and less easily socialized dog breeds than between dogs and wolves." [1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.10.011 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.10.011
  - brabel 7y ago
    I don't really understand this rebutal... the change in behaviour from the initial population (even if it had already been partially domesticated) was not just interesting, it was absolutely amazing. You can check for yourself how the foxes brought to the US behave on Youtube[1]! Also, the similar study with mice[2] by the same Russian Institute seems to have had even more striking results. The rebutal seems to be using only theoretical objections, without any new original, empirical findings, to counteract tangible evidence that had been accepted by (and astonished) numerous other researchers who actually came into contact with the animals. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dwjS_eI-lQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dwjS_eI-lQ [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/health/25rats.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/health/25rats.html

superpermutat0r 7y ago

The experiment is not designed well. I would guess that the tameness comes from the non stimulating environment more than the process of selection. It is known that mother imprints a lot of hormonal/stress activities to children while pregnant. Just like starving pregnant mothers have an effect on generations that come through hormonal gene activation similar thing happens to animals in wilderness. Is there a line of foxes bread for generations in captivity with purely random selection?

deogeo 7y ago
I believe Belyayev had a control group, yes.
- superpermutat0r 7y ago
  Still, the nature of the control group might have a smaller taming effect needing longer time to turn into tame.