Baby Foxes Going to the Dogs

Thursday, December 8th, 2005

I’ve blogged on this before, but now I’ve got a photo. From Baby Foxes Going to the Dogs:

Young foxes, or kits, scamper in a cage in Siberia, Russia, where they are part of a 45-year research project to domesticate foxes. Each generation has been selectively bred for tameness — fearlessness and nonaggression toward humans. By now the foxes in the project behave like pet dogs, barking and wagging their tails at humans.

Also like pet dogs, the domesticated foxes can ‘read’ human cues (pointing, for example) much better than their wild cousins or even tame chimpanzees, according to a new study published today in Current Biology. The study authors call such behavior social intelligence. They say its appearance in domesticated foxes may help us better understand how intelligence developed in humans and other animals.

As you can see, selectively breeding foxes for tameness has led to animals that both look and behave like dogs.

Posted in Animals, Cute | No Comments »

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Isegoria

Baby Foxes Going to the Dogs

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