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Researchers think foxes hold key to domestication clues

By Wesley Coburn

BATH, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 08: A fox walks through a cemetery at dusk on February 8, 2018 in Bath, England. Although the number of foxes in the UK is actually on the decline, according to a recent study the number of urban foxes in England has quadrupled in the past 20 years with an estimated 150,000 foxes in England, or about one for every 300 urban residents. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
BATH, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 08: A fox walks through a cemetery at dusk on February 8, 2018 in Bath, England. Although the number of foxes in the UK is actually on the decline, according to a recent study the number of urban foxes in England has quadrupled in the past 20 years with an estimated 150,000 foxes in England, or about one for every 300 urban residents. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images) /
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 Researchers believe foxes may hold key to understanding how domestication works.

Behavioral geneticist Anna Kukekova of the University of Illinois, together with others in the scientific community, think they may have unlocked at least some of the secrets to the domestication process of dogs by studying foxes.

This news was brought to the attention of Dog O’Day through an article on the website of Science Magazine.

In 1959 scientists in Russia took a group of so-called “silver” foxes (in reality a naturally-dark-coated red fox) and bred only the most gentle – determined as “those who do not bite a human finger poked in their cage.” The offspring of these “gentle” foxes were then bred, and the process repeated over and over through generations.

By the eighth generation, the foxes started to seek out human attention, and now some even enjoy having their tummies rubbed, according to Science. 

Foxes are obviously not dogs, nor are they wolves or coyotes, but they are members of family Canidae, and author Marguerite Henry wrote a fictionalized history Cinnabar, the One O’Clock Fox, about the infamous Mount Vernon resident who foiled George Washington’s fox-hunting parties.

The Russian scientists, while breeding for tamer foxes, began to simultaneously breed for extra-aggressive foxes in the 1960s, in order to better understand through contrast.

After the genome sequence of the silver fox had been broken down, Kukekova studied 10 “tame” foxes, 10 foxes from the aggressive bloodline and 10 “average” foxes, searching for genes that might provide clues either to domesticated dog behavior or typical wild fox behavior.

The fox gene “SorCS1” stood out during this process, which assists in forming memories and learning.

The scientists studied the SorCS1 gene in 1,600 foxes, both tame and aggressive, over six years, based on response to human observation. Their conclusion resulted in the hypothesis that habitat conditions affect how the SorCS1 gene works.

“This work is really great,” Princeton University evolutionary biologist Bridgett vonHoldt told Science., before adding that many genes work together to produce results, making it a complex field of study.

Perhaps, as the Science article suggests, domestication is a behavioral spectrum, ranging from tame on one end to wild on the other.

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