[Nekojoe]

I 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.

[araneae]

Sort of mostly right. You can't artificially inseminate with an embryo though, only semen.

What was interesting about the experiment is that while they only selected for tameness, a lot of the characteristics you see in modern dogs arose. For instance, piebald fur, curly fur, curly tails, floppy ears, shortened snout, etc. Basically what was happening was that by selecting for tameness, they were both selecting for a lengthier juvenile period and more paedomorphic traits.

So this answered the question of how humans managed to select for traits in domesticated dogs that don't appear in wolves. How do you select for piebald color if it isn't present in the initial gene pool? Or a curly tail? Well, those variations are a consequence of domestication.

For instance, only in domesticated animals do you see that characteristic white forehead star, and they made that discovery of what was happening from these animals. As an animal grows, cells containing melanin migrate throughout the body. But if you length the juvenile period and make them move more slowly, some die before they reach their final destination. The white star on the forehead, seen in these foxes as well as horses, cows, and others, is because the melanin containing cells reach there last, and they don't quite make it.

[jamesbkel]

I studied this in a course on canine psychology and you are exactly right that they were selecting only for tameness and that it helped answer the question of why we see certain traits in domesticated dogs.

The original work was done by Dmitri Belyaev

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_K._Belyaev

[pygy_]

> You can't artificially inseminate with an embryo though, only semen.

Of course you can. Fertilize the eggs in vitro then transplant them.

</386>

[araneae]

It was a tongue-in-cheek comment. "Inseminate" means "to introduce semen into the reproductive tract of a female." You implant embryos, not inseminate.

[slantyyz]

Funny I just read an article about Russia's "subway dogs" which also talked about these foxes.

Link to the article: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/628a8500-ff1c-11de-a677-00144feab4...

From what the article said, as they started breeding the foxes with the most favorable characteristics, they noticed physical changes in the foxes. Their ears became floppier, they were more likely to become spotted, and that they were much more doglike (i.e., tail wagging and barking).

[rlivsey]

Radiolab also featured a story about them last year: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/10/02

As an aside, I think Radiolab is one of the best podcasts out there and it's certainly worth a listen if you've never heard it before.

[superk]

I think I saw or read about this too. I remember they did the same experiment with foxes.... and rats. Imagine walking into a room full of hundreds of rats bred for generations to be as vicious as possible.

[viraptor]

Sounds like a standard session of D&D.

[dlokshin]

Domestication in less than a half century. That's pretty incredible.

[jacquesm]

No, 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]

The 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]

Good 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.

[hugh3]

Floating there on its own seems pretty unlikely, since Australia didn't acquire any other wildlife from South-East Asia. At the time of British settlement the dingo was the only placental mammal on the continent, apart from bats and humans.

[brc]

The Australian Kelpie is part dingo part collie (originally). The resulting animal is an extremely intelligent but hardy working dog. One that works all day in hot conditions but follows its master unwaveringly. I would say that Dingoes aren't true wild dogs.