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Belyaev / Belyayev Fox Domestication Experiments (USSR; 1950s Onward)

G

GSX1400

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Has anybody heard of the fox breeding experiment carried out over 40 odd years in Russia by a chap called Belyaev?

Apparently he set about to breed a tame fox and selected rigorously for more than average tameness. After several years of selective breeding he had his tame foxes, BUT the foxes had apparently changed their appearance to resemble border collies. Collie or general dog-like traits had not been selected for but it seems that there are certain characteristics that tend to arise more often in domestic populations.

As the most striking thing about these reports to me is the startling appearance of the collie foxes, I would have expected to be able to find colour pictures on the Internet. I can't find any. There are a few grainy old black and white pictures and some sketches, but that's all.

Does anyone have any pictures of these animals or is it a scam or what?
 
Using the dreaded W*k*p*d**, I found two articles (here* and here) both of which contain colour photographs.

*WARNING: The photo in this link is very cute...
Edit: Here's the photo ...
_40805587_foxes_203.jpg
 
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they really are cute.

I think there's been a bit of dishonesty somewhere. How could foxes breed to look exactly like border collies? I think they've speeded up the taming process by breeding foxes with border collies. It must be possible if lions can breed with tigers etc.

And also, why bother breeding foxes to be tame when we already have dogs?
 
You cant breed foxes with dogs, they are two different families.

And its an experiment to show how easily a wild animal can be domesticated. The foxes were already there for furs. (and I have no doubt a pure silver fox is of more use to a furrier than a silver and white.)

And its kind of fun. Who else has a pet fox?
 
From WJ's first link:

The scientists bred about 45,000 foxes to get to the tame stage.

When breeding the animals, they only chose them on how well they responded to people.

But the physical changes came as well - making scientists think cuteness comes along with being tame.
Click to expand...

One wonders if how well the foxes responded to people is open to some give and take with how well people responded to the foxes? Could there have been some unconscious selection process there too?
 
There's a nice picture here:
bionet.nsc.ru/booklet/images ... el3Big.jpg
Link is dead. No archived version found.
 
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mindalai said:
they really are cute.

I think there's been a bit of dishonesty somewhere. How could foxes breed to look exactly like border collies? I think they've speeded up the taming process by breeding foxes with border collies. It must be possible if lions can breed with tigers etc.

And also, why bother breeding foxes to be tame when we already have dogs?
Click to expand...

Simple, really. They said they selected for tameness, so presumably bred the tamer-seeming foxes together to increase those characteristics; what they're saying is that the colouration and the behaviour seem to be linked. I have often wondered if white pattern genes and dilution colours in horses are linked to domestication, as truly wild horses (as opposed to feral ones--which are what mustangs et al. are) tend to be drab colours.
 
Leaferne said:
They said they selected for tameness, so presumably bred the tamer-seeming foxes together to increase those characteristics; what they're saying is that the colouration and the behaviour seem to be linked. I have often wondered if white pattern genes and dilution colours in horses are linked to domestication, as truly wild horses (as opposed to feral ones--which are what mustangs et al. are) tend to be drab colours.
Click to expand...
Makes sense. If whiter horses in the wild tended to be less wary of other species, that (and their distinctive colour) would tend to make them easier prey, so natural selection would thin them out of the popoulation.

Replace hungry wolves with kindly humans, however, and the white variations would be able to express themselves again.
 
It's worth reading the scientific papers that accompany the grainy old black and white pictures I mentioned above. The current thinking seems to be that a great many characteristics often found in domestic animals seem to be found in many different domestic species. It is thought that the very process of domestication based on nothing other than a selection for a particular character trait or physiological trait makes the appearance of these other characteristics more likely.

The 'package' seems to include piebald colouration; hair curling; shortening of tails; curling of tails; the appearance of a star or blaze of white on the forehead or between the eyes; tameness; a change in the fertility cycle; floppy ears; shorter snouts, etc.

By the looks of things, it would appear that you can start selecting for any one of these traits or characteristics and will eventually end up with a greater or lesser number of other items from the domestication 'package'. Which is weird.

Some of this could be attributable to neotony, which is a process whereby juvenile characteristics are retained into adulthood or, looking from the other point of view, sexual maturity appears during childhood.

An interesting idea is that a number of species may have domesticated themselves by kicking about on the outskirts of human populations, whereby the thinking goes that the potential conflict that this would create would set up an environment in which tameness, and the retention of juvenile characteristics would reduce the chances of a potentially fatal conflict.

So here's a facinating idea: did we domesticate wolves or did they domesticate us? The answer may be that we each domesticated the other. It would have been beneficial for humans to have wolves about the place to drive off other predators such as bears and big cats. The wolves would benefit from our scraps. Both species would benefit from collaboration on hunting expeditions. The list of mutual benefits would have been enormous.

During the first tentative steps towards each other, those wolves that were overly shy would naff off at the first sight of a human and not benefit. Overly shy humans would also be frightened off by wolves wanting to join a hunting expedition and would lose the potential benefit. Overly aggressive members of either species would get into more potentially lethal conflicts with their opposite numbers. Cuter, more juvenile members of both species would bring out the motherly and big brotherly instincts in the adults of the other species. And so gradually the maximum benefit of the co-operation between the two species would tend to be enjoyed by the tamer, more co-operative, more 'appealing' members of each species.

The theory has been advanced in the past that humans may have gone through a period of neotonisation because we appear in many respects to look like the juveniles of our closest relatives. This ties in with the above theory.

So what do you think? Have we and wolves/dogs domesticated each other and each come away from the process with different items from the domestication 'package'?

..............................Humans..........wolves/dogs

Neotony?.................yes................yes
Curly hair?...............yes................yes
Floppy ears?.............not really.......yes
piebald colouration?..somewhat*.....yes
shortening of tails?....n/a................yes
curling of tails?..........n/a................yes
star or blaze?............no.................yes
tameness?................yes................yes
change in fertility?.....yes................yes
shorter snouts?.........yes................yes

*piebald - well I've got dark brown hair on my head; a red beard; a lighter red mustache (or moustoisesexeu or however the greys of Oxford & Cambridge would have us spell it); blond eyebrows; and short blond hairs all over my body.

So obviously the above lists aren't definitive. Many dogs have straignt hair as do many humans but I think that there is a general trend.

The chances are that whatever selection pressures originally led to the development of the wild form - wolves and our putative chimp-like ancestors - still continued to work on us both throughout our long association, which would have prevented us both from fully adopting every aspect of the domestication package.

Things get even more interesting when you start throwing in other domesticated species - sheep, pigs, horses, cows, goats, cats. We and our wolf comrades would probably have had an effect on each of these as they came into the fold but equally, to a greater or lesser degree, they would have affected us.

Thoughts?
 
Very interesting GSX,

I think Stan Gooch says somewhere that the white (Caucasuian) race got its pale skins through neonatisation (spelling?). Be interesting to see if wolves were originally domesticated in areas where people with pale skins were predominant.
 
I would have thought that the caucasian pale skin is more to do with vitamin D absorption in less sunny climates than it's to do with looking more like a baby. Apart from anything else, why would having pale skin make you look more like a baby?
 
Hi Minda,

Vitamin D is definitely part of the story. As for the connection between white skin and neotony, if I remeber correctly Gooch says that young humans of all colours are paler at birth than later in life. Not being a midwife I'm only going on what I read.
 
That's true actually. Hadn't thought of that.

Complicated business this evolution lark.
 
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EnolaGaia said:
This 2019 article is representative of skeptical responses to Belyayev's research
Click to expand...
I consider their counterthesis to be much-weaker overall than the conclusions the original research arrived at, even just in terms of the interpretable empirical trends. Jibing at the scale of the initial dataset, or casting doubt upon the pedigree purity at commencement, are unconvincing approaches for attack.

I've heard/read about this massive (and rigorous) re-breeding experiment many times over the years, and it has me utterly convinced.

Why is there such a reluctance to accept the premise? Is it seen as an implicit license for eugenics, or worse?
 
Ermintruder said:
I consider their counterthesis to be much-weaker overall than the conclusions the original research arrived at, even just in terms of the interpretable empirical trends. Jibing at the scale of the initial dataset, or casting doubt upon the pedigree purity at commencement, are unconvincing approaches for attack.

I've heard/read about this massive (and rigorous) re-breeding experiment many times over the years, and it has me utterly convinced.

Why is there such a reluctance to accept the premise? Is it seen as an implicit license for eugenics, or worse?
Click to expand...
In 'The Goodness Paradox' by Richard Wrangham, he discusses Belyayev's experiments at length, especially in the context of reducing reactive aggression, and how the 'breeding out' of it as a trait causes other secondary effects, such as floppy ears, shorter jaws, reduced bone mass and a reduction in inter-sex differences, effects that can be seen in other domesticated animals, in comparison to wild strains. There's even a neural correlate.

It's part of the argument he makes for humans essentially being domesticated descendants of a proto-human and that the process seems to occur around 350k years ago and that compared with our 'root stock' we have many of the same traits as other domesticated animals and a much much lower propensity to reactive violence than even (say) bonobos (greater than a factor of ten less) and chimps (at least two factors of ten) and this is what make us so good at cooperating with each other.

He also mentions that discussion of any such research has been widely interpreted as support for eugenics, which of course it's not. I've been meaning to review the book, but I'd have to write 500 words to do it justice and haven't got around to it...mainly as I'm writing something else right now.

The author puts forward a good argument, but even couched in careful terms there are things in here to incur the wrath of the easily offended - chimps are astonishingly brutal and violent and it might be inferred that the author has no time for those who think any wild animal can be tamed in a meaningful way, wolves for example. There is also quite a bit in here about relatively recent hunter-gatherer cultures and this flies in the face of the romantics who think that was some kind of pastoral idyll - these cultures are for the most part controlled by cabals of men and women are very much second class citizens.

The most controversial part (possibly) is that he suggests that we are self domesticated, or bluntly, that reactive violence was bred out by the simple expedient of killing off those who were disruptive in this way.

I really recommend it, it's eye opening, very well researched but also very readable. :hoff:
 
Ermintruder said:
... I've heard/read about this massive (and rigorous) re-breeding experiment many times over the years, and it has me utterly convinced.
Why is there such a reluctance to accept the premise? Is it seen as an implicit license for eugenics, or worse?
Click to expand...

IMHO the major problems derived from over-confidence in the prospects for such a long-term breeding project proving anything.

One basis for justifiable skepticism concerns the self-confounding experimental setup. They were testing the possibility of breeding foxes comfortable with human contact through multi-generational selective breeding within a restricted environment that involved a non-natural degree of human contact. How can one reasonably attribute the alleged "domesticated" trends in captive population behavior to breeding alone? It's the classic nature vs. nurture conundrum ...

Another basis for justifiable skepticism concerns the presumed linkage between obviously genetic outcomes and achieving the desired behavioral outcomes. How can one reasonably claim the physical attributes that arose and proliferated among the captive breeding population were in any way strictly associated with progressively "domesticated" behaviors?

This latter angle touches on another issue ... The whole project ran out of funding support (and momentum) in the wake of Belyayev's death and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It wasn't until after the project had fallen on hard times that technologies arrived which might be applied to analyze the captive population's genetics and begin to draw (even so much as speculative ... ) correlations between genes and domestication.
 
EnolaGaia said:
IMHO the major problems derived from over-confidence in the prospects for such a long-term breeding project proving anything.

One basis for justifiable skepticism concerns the self-confounding experimental setup. They were testing the possibility of breeding foxes comfortable with human contact through multi-generational selective breeding within a restricted environment that involved a non-natural degree of human contact. How can one reasonably attribute the alleged "domesticated" trends in captive population behavior to breeding alone? It's the classic nature vs. nurture conundrum ...

Another basis for justifiable skepticism concerns the presumed linkage between obviously genetic outcomes and achieving the desired behavioral outcomes. How can one reasonably claim the physical attributes that arose and proliferated among the captive breeding population were in any way strictly associated with progressively "domesticated" behaviors?

This latter angle touches on another issue ... The whole project ran out of funding support (and momentum) in the wake of Belyayev's death and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It wasn't until after the project had fallen on hard times that technologies arrived which might be applied to analyze the captive population's genetics and begin to draw (even so much as speculative ... ) correlations between genes and domestication.
Click to expand...

I suspect that there is much truth to this.

I don’t know much about embryonic development. I ran across this hypothesis when researching something else abut 10 years ago. (The something else was the widespread belief among black Americans I worked with, and then found promulgated on public radio in the WDC area, that blacks were genetically morally superior to whites because their darker skin, moral superiority, and telepathy were all melanin-based. Sorry, EG, but I kid you not.)

The old dogzombie.blogspot.com site has some very thoughtful observations

The Dog Zombie: Search results for aggression

Neuromorphological Changes following Selection for Tameness and Aggression in the Russian Farm-Fox experiment (jneurosci.org)

The “Domestication Syndrome” in Mammals: A Unified Explanation Based on Neural Crest Cell Behavior and Genetics - PMC (nih.gov)
 
Many absurd notions of human mental capacity or personality traits have been based on pseudoscientific classifications of appearance. As far as I know, these all have been refuted, and understandably many people find such ideas disturbing. Perhaps everyone sighs in relief to discover that Belyayev's research was flawed.

However, similar links have been documented for invertebrates. The grasshopper/locust physical and behavioral transition is one example.

What if one day advances in developmental neurology permit us to gauge human mental traits based on appearance? For the record, I suspect that these correlations will be subtle enough that humans will NOT be able to judge them accurately just by eyeballing someone; more likely, an advanced algorithm trained via machine learning would be required to make the call.

Still, such a possibility is not out of the question. What will we do with such techniques, and the information they gather?
 
mindalai said:
they really are cute.

I think there's been a bit of dishonesty somewhere. How could foxes breed to look exactly like border collies? I think they've speeded up the taming process by breeding foxes with border collies. It must be possible if lions can breed with tigers etc.

And also, why bother breeding foxes to be tame when we already have dogs?
Click to expand...
Having just wandered over here, those foxes are merle coloured. It's just one colour that border collies can come in, usually they are black and white, or mostly black. Merle (that blue and white colouring) isn't that common. But other breeds of dog can have a brindled coat, which is a similar black striping, but on a brown background.

It's just a colour variant. Like cats usually revert to tabby if allowed to breed freely.
 
The decision to cull or keep and breed was based on behavior, not physical traits. Over multiple generations of this cull/keep decision, the unusual physical traits appeared and then became predominant. I think this was not a flawed study as the aggressive behavior to human beings was the independent variable.

The dog zombie link I gave earlier is from a dog geneticist. I found it very helpful.

A main goal of domesticated animals is to produce stock which are less aggressive to humans. This is what the Russian fox experiment demonstrated.

In North America, bison breeding for meat has become popular. Since most of the bison now have genes from domesticated cattle, the conundrum now is to what extent these genes should be bred for. The less aggressive bison - and remember that adult bison weigh about 2000 pounds - have cow genes which can reduce the animal's ability to thrive in natural conditions.
 
Coal said:
Love to have your opinion once you have done so :hoff:
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'The Goodness Paradox' by Richard Wrangham is utterly brilliant! Thank you so much for the recommendation!

From my perspective, he has got to now be one of the greats in popular science writing, alongside Dawkins, Morris, Pinker & Sagen etc. I dived-in with the Kindle version, the paper version will appear on order soon via my local bookshop.

His lucid explanation of reactive versus 'rationalised' violence is both utterly-shocking and inescapable. I read a chapter every night, and will now re-read the whole book from start to finish, before saying any more about it.
 
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