How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution

by Lee Alan Dugatkin, Lyudmila Trut

Tucked away in Siberia, there are furry, four-legged creatures with wagging tails and floppy ears that are as docile and friendly as any lapdog. But, despite appearances, these are not dogs—they are foxes. They are the result of the most astonishing experiment in breeding ever undertaken—imagine speeding up thousands of years of evolution into a few decades. In 1959, biologists Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut set out to do just that, by starting with a few dozen silver foxes from fox farms in the USSR and attempting to recreate the evolution of wolves into dogs in real time in order to witness the process of domestication. This is the extraordinary, untold story of this remarkable undertaking.

Most accounts of the natural evolution of wolves place it over a span of about 15,000 years, but within a decade, Belyaev and Trut's fox breeding experiments had resulted in puppy-like foxes with floppy ears, piebald spots, and curly tails. Along with these physical changes came genetic and behavioral changes, as well. The foxes were bred using selection criteria for tameness, and with each generation, they became increasingly interested in human companionship. Trut has been there the whole time, and has been the lead scientist on this work since Belyaev's death in 1985, and with Lee Dugatkin, biologist and science writer, she tells the story of the adventure, science, politics, and love behind it all. In How to Tame a Fox, Dugatkin and Trut take us inside this path-breaking experiment in the midst of the brutal winters of Siberia to reveal how scientific history is made and continues to be made today.

To date, fifty-six generations of foxes have been domesticated, and we continue to learn significant lessons from them about the genetic and behavioral evolution of domesticated animals. How to Tame a Fox offers an incredible tale of scientists at work, while also celebrating the deep attachments that have brought humans and animals together throughout time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Animals, Biology, History, Nature, Audiobook

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 26, 2016

About the author

Born in 1962, Lee Alan Dugatkin is a professor and distinguished university scholar in the department of biology at the University of Louisville. His main area of research interest is the evolution of social behavior.

Reviews

[Olive Fellows (abookolive) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A grand genetic experiment, a charismatic scientist, cuddly foxes, infuriating Soviet political barriers...I loved EVERYTHING about this!

Click here to hear more of my thoughts on this book over on my Booktube channel, abookolive!

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did have a few minor reservations about this book, but they were outweighed by the amazing story of the fox domestication experiment and its wider implications. The story starts in the early 1950s with Russian scientist Dimitry Belyaev. (I’ve also seen his name rendered in Latin script as “Belyayev”). Working on fox farms (where foxes were reared for their fur and where most were highly aggressive towards their human captors) he noticed a small number of foxes that were calmer than the others, and wondered whether selectively breeding such foxes might eventually result in a new variety of animal. He started a full experiment in 1959, working with the book’s co-author Lyudmila Trut, who is now 86 years old. Apart from the group of tamer animals, the experiment also selectively matched the most aggressive foxes, and kept a third, control group. The results were extraordinary. It is generally thought that it took thousands of years for wolves to evolve into domestic dogs, but selective breeding of the tamer foxes started to produce startling results after just 4 generations. After 8 to 10 years the experiment with the tame group had produced a set of foxes with entirely different behaviours from the other two groups. Even more strikingly, the tame foxes began to undergo anatomical changes, with smaller skulls and shorter snouts than their wild cousins, as well as changes to fur colour.

The authors explain that this didn’t happen as a result of gene mutation, but from changes in gene activation and expression arising from the changed selection pressures of the captive breeding programme. The success of the fox experiment led to the obvious question of whether it could be repeated with other species, and it was apparently successfully replicated with rats.

One of my reservations was that at times the book went a bit over the top in telling us how “adorable” and “loveable” the tame foxes were. I listened to the audio version, and the narrator adopted a saccharine tone of voice at these points. However these suggestions were relevant, in that Belyaev and Trut pondered the way the tame foxes were able to manipulate the emotions of their human keepers. There is good evidence, for example, that dogs are adept at reading human body language, something wolves seem unable to do when tested in field experiments. This led to a discussion, in the second half of the book, about the fascinating hypothesis that humans may be a “self-domesticated” species. Personally I first encountered this idea in Alice Roberts’ book “Tamed”, but it’s suggested in this book that Belyaev was the first scientist to set out the idea. There is a strong tendency for domesticated species to retain juvenile features into adulthood, and humans today have smaller jaws and teeth than our ancient ancestors. “Self-domestication” may have arisen through selection pressure favouring those who were calmer and more socially skilled, rather than individuals who were over-aggressive. It’s suggested something similar may have happened with the bonobo, a species both physically smaller and less aggressive than its nearest relative, the chimpanzee. I found this all really absorbing.

There’s a brief mention in the book of the researcher who had the difficult job of overseeing the “aggressive” group within the fox breeding programme, who had to wear gloves two inches thick to protect her hands from the bites delivered by the snarling, hyper-aggressive foxes she worked with. Despite that she said she preferred “her” foxes to the cuddly specimens of the tame group, as her foxes had “retained their dignity”. On that point, and on a lighter note, I’ll leave you with a Gary Larson cartoon.



Whether you prefer the wild or the tame, this book is a great read!

[Jan Rice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Monument to Academician D. K. Belyaev and Tame Fox by Sirozha, from Belyaev's Wikipedia page

Lee Alan Dugatkin spoke at my local book festival last Labor Day weekend, and since the tame-fox research had figured in prior reading, I bought the book, which the author said was the first to tell the whole story. The story begins in 1952, when then 35-year-old scientist Dmitri Belyaev visited commercial fox fur farms in the Soviet Union to start pilot projects and gets officially underway in 1958 when he chose student Lyudmila Trut to run the project

Belyaev's interest was domestication. He told Trut he wanted to make a dog out of a fox. He wanted to discover in real time how wolves had become dogs. Supposedly evolution took place over eons, but he'd noticed changes in the fur color of the minks that, along with foxes, formed the mainstay of Russia's approximately 30-year-old fur industry. He hypothesized that the mink must have had genetic variability for fur color already present albeit dormant and that it had been triggered by changes in selection pressure. Further, he guessed that selection for tameness could goose the activation of the domestication process in foxes.

Belyaev conjectured that the process of domestication was spread by our early ancestors having selected for tameness. But the process isn't necessarily one-way. Animals less suited for life in the wild may have hung around humans, thus increasing the chances of their own survival. Then the demand placed by living near or among humans cumulatively wreaked its further impact on successive offspring. If the behavior and physiology of an animal was stably geared to the demands of its environment, what happened when that environment changed, posing new and different conditions for survival? He thought that the new pressures would change activity in the genes and how they regulated functioning, possibly releasing a cascade of changes. Given the initial time period in which he began, Belyaev was thinking in terms of hormones rather than neurotransmitters and DNA.

Lee Alan Dugatkin, the primary author, who is an evolutionary biologist and historian of science, then gives the reader some background on animal domestication. Dogs were first by a long shot, then our other domesticated species. But some animals have not been able to be domesticated, for example, zebras, despite being close relatives of horses. Perhaps they lacked sufficient genetic variability.

It wasn't a sure thing that foxes could be domesticated. The foxes in the fur farms were so fierce that workers who handled them had to wear two-inch-thick gloves. At the outset those workers were incredulous about taming. Also, foxes live in isolation (except during breeding) instead of in packs like wolves; "lone-fox" would be a more accurate expression than "lone-wolf!" Nevertheless, changes did begin to emerge as soon as three generations after standardized selection for tameness and successive breeding of the tamest. Even in the second generation the tamest allowed themselves to be petted, and by the sixth and seventh, tail-wagging, then curly tails emerged, as well as pups' opening their eyes a day earlier. And eventually there were many more changes. The project incorporated a control group of foxes and then the breeding of an aggressive group, too.

After its beginning in commercial fur farms, the project was housed in an experimental fox farm in Akademgorodok (founded 1958), near Novosibirsk in Siberia.


Part of the background for the story is its political context. The work began while Stalin was still living, and even after his death, Belyaev had to dodge the influence of the sham scientist Trofim Lysenko. Lysenko had been put in charge of science. Genetics was outlawed, so Belyaev at first had to work under the guise of improving the fur industry. The threat was serious: Belyaev's older brother, who had been involved in another branch of genetics, had been disappeared in 1937; he later was found to have been arrested and executed. Lysenko also had faked data on higher crop yields, which played into the deaths by famine under Stalin. His power over the USSR's scientific community only gradually waned, but even then there was Khrushchev to contend with. Being in Siberia served a useful purpose in that respect.

As time went on, the politics of Detente allowed more work with the international community which, however, suffered when the Cold War ratcheted up again in the '80s. Then with the chaos that accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union, funding disappeared. By then Dmitri Belyaev had died, leaving the work to Lyudmila Trut, his worthy successor. Foxes starved and sickened, greatly reducing their number, and Trut had to make some 'Sophie's Choices' to sacrifice some of the animals for their fur for income to save the rest. Also, past connections allowed her to reach out to the West. Here is a PDF of the article that appeared in the March/April 1999 issue of American Scientist, giving the history of the work and a bibliography, as well as appealing for help: http://www.eebweb.arizona.edu/Courses...

An appeal also went out via the New York Times science writer Malcolm Browne, and interestingly some of what's in the article doesn't clearly fit with this book I read. For example, the book doesn't seem to emphasize the absolute point made by Trut in the article as to the thousands of years of change in the wild versus what was being observed to happen so rapidly in the experiment. Also, the book never refers to "Dr. Trut," who was still an undergrad when Belyaev recruited her in 1958. https://nyti.ms/2jVnm89

After the difficult decade of the '90s, work resumed, now involving collaborators from outside Russia. Russian-born scientist Anna Kukekova, then at Cornell, helped map the fox genome and compare it to that of dogs. Most dogs have 39 pairs of chromosomes to the silver fox's 17, but it turned out there was enough overlap to proceed. Trut received that news soon after her 70th birthday--45 years after she had joined the project. The initial results from mapping just a portion of the fox genome was enough to elicit the funds to continue from the National Institutes of Health. Further DNA analysis based on DNA samples from 685 tame and aggressive foxes showed the unique characteristics of the two groups could be mapped onto a specific part of Chromosome 12, where the two groups, in the words of the author, had different sets of genes. By then we're up to 2011, 59 years after Belyaev made his initial foray with an eye toward beginning the project. It was 53 years since Trut had joined.

In the meantime, another scientist, Brian Hare, did cognitive studies, particularly studies of social cognition, with the foxes. The tame foxes did well on so-called object choice tasks, that is, the ability to follow human cues in determining under which cup a piece of food is hidden. Dogs are good at this, but wolves--and chimps--can't do it. Sure enough, tame foxes could do it (a little better than dogs could), but not the control group of foxes; they couldn't.

Another scientist studied strange new vocalizations made by the tame foxes; someone else showed they could be trained like dogs, and still someone else showed that the relationship seen in dogs between wider, rounded snouts and thicker, shorter legs held for tame foxes, too.

The author puts the developments in this book in their scientific contexts, which I found helpful, for instance, issues of nature versus nurture, emergence of humanoids and ancient relationships of dogs and people, and contrast of chimps and bonobos in consideration of what he calls self-domestication in humans.
----------------------------------------------

At the time of Belyaev's early hypotheses, talk of genes being activated or being inactive may have been radical, but not so much any more. Here is an article from the Feb.22, 2018, issue of The Economist on products of genes that inactivate other genes by binding to RNA, the "messenger," and rendering it inactive. I'm primarily looking at the first part of this article, as I found the part about schizophrenia more abstruse. Although this book itself is about adaptation only in regard to domestication, other stressful changes in the environment also call forth adaptation, which sometimes is heritable. https://www.economist.com/news/scienc...

We read this book out loud, which may have been a mistake. There is a lot of anecdotal material--stories about the principals and about episodes with the tame foxes--that one could speed through if simply reading. Also I thought the main principals, Belyaev and Trut, were made into such paragons that it was like studying about George Washington and the cherry tree. Maybe they were, but, still, that doesn't make for the most interesting reading.

Also I noticed the author usually has reference to such phrases as people's having become dogs' masters, people's domesticating dogs, and, when it's people we're talking about, "self"-domestication. And reference to the selection for tameness in the fox experiment as "artificial." He does broach the directionality issue by indicating wolves may have begun their own domestication, but he tends to revert. If wolves initiated the domestication process, wouldn't that be self-domestication? I realize "artificial" may refer to the foxes' being in cages and so couldn't initiate. But once the process began, they were involved. What I'm getting at is that people are part of nature, too, not outside it.

Sometimes I'm self-critical about having decided not to pursue biology or medicine, but I think it may have been for good reasons, not simply reasons of avoidance. Just not quite as exciting as other areas of study, in a way that can't be pinned entirely on the book, despite my little quibbles.


This book, along with two others, received a current review in The New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/...


Addendum: On April 5, 2018, I went over to the nearby Carter Center to hear a talk by the evolutionary biologist author of the new book Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution. The book is about rapid evolution that's being observed as cities cover more and more of the globe and animals adapt. The subject matter, I thought, was related to the subject of this Fox book. That author began his talk by describing varieties of beetles that have adapted to living in anthills and fooling the ants for the benefit of the beetle species. Such adaptations, he said, had occurred over thousands of years. Then he talked about the varieties of birds, lizards, (outdoor) mice, and other animals that are the subject of his book, having shown adaptive changes over relatively short periods of time. But he seemed to be implying that this all is the result of mutations, though how the observed changes could happen over such short periods seems to conflict with the familiar "thousands-of-years" (or even "hundreds-of-thousands...") meme. (One topic was hedgehogs getting their heads stuck by the quills in fast-food soft-ice-cream cups, and the author did have a photo of a quill-less hedgehog, but no evidence of a proliferation of advantageously mutated hedgehogs.) So, in the question-and-answer portion, I asked (using the language of the Fox book) whether he was looking at differential activation of already present genetic variability, since how could mutations account for change occurring over only decades (or even years). Well, he didn't answer clearly. He didn't acknowledge anything re "activation." So then someone else, maybe a student, asked a related question (can't remember), and the speaker answered in terms of epigenetics, which he said is when there is different--and heritable--gene expression (I think he used the term expression) but without genetic change (in DNA). (That's what the Economist link is about: epigenetics and how changes are passed along if not through DNA.) So then I went back to the Fox book: Is it referring to genetic or epigenetic change? First, the Fox book does claim to be about an experiment on evolution, an experiment producing "significant results in shorter time than a classic interpretation of Darwin's theory of evolution would suggest" (p. 24). Then I looked to the end of the book, since it was only toward the later years of the fox experiment that gene sequencing and so forth could be done:

Now they could begin with the difficult job of identifying which of the genes they had mapped might be linked to the changes involved in domestication, and ultimately begin understanding how on earth it was possible that bits of DNA that once coded for a wild animal could be tweaked to produce a human-loving domesticated creature. (pp. 184-185)

They discovered that the genes associated with many of the changes to the unique behavioral and morphological characteristics of the tame foxes could be mapped onto a specific region of fox chromosome 12. On this region, the elite and aggressive foxes had different sets of genes.... (p. 187)

Many of the genes of chromosome 12 of the foxes that were involved in their domestication were also found on the corresponding dog chromosomes involved in their domestication. It was almost too good to be true. (p. 187)

Next they would conduct experiments to probe into the specific function of each of the genes and into whether the expression of these genes had been altered to bring about the characteristics of domestication, as Dmitri had suggested from the start, before people even had a lexicon with such terms. By 2011, technology was available to begin doing this. (pp. 187-188)

They were able to identify 13,624 genes, and in a complex analysis of the amount of proteins being produced by those genes in the tame foxes versus the aggressive foxes, they discovered that in 335 of these genes--or about 3%--there were dramatic differences in the protein production levels. For example, the HTR2C gene, which is important in the production of serotonin and dopamine, had higher levels of expression in the tame foxes. What was especially intriguing was that with some of the 335 genes--280 of them--expression was higher in the tame foxes, while in the rest of them, expression was lower in the tame foxes than in the aggressive foxes. So the change to tamer behavior appeared to involve no simple process. What's more, there were complex interactions between these genes as well. So complex is the story of the expression of the full set of these genes that it will be the subject of investigation for years to come. (pp. 188-189)

(Both the Fox book and the new book Darwin Comes to Town, which I haven't read and which is by another author, are intended for lay audiences.)

The authors of the Fox book do seem to be talking about genetic change.

In going back into the book and searching for answers to my question, I noticed how the author, in weaving his story, jumps around. That made it hard to link up the sections that are about gene sequencing. Also, I think that's part of what made the book somewhat boring. I wondered (again) about whether the author was being esoteric to avoid controversy.

[Ravencrantz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hello yes I'd like to adopt a fox

[Angie Boyter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dedicated scientists, adorable animals, and the realities of Soviet-era scientific research

I have been intrigued by recent reports about research into how wild animals evolved into the companions beloved of so many people today throughout the world. How to Tame a Fox showed me that the tale is even more interesting than I had thought!
How to Tame a Fox tells the story of genetics researchers in Novosibirsk who have been breeding foxes since 1959 to try to learn if they could develop a domesticated fox line and, if they were successful, how those foxes would differ from their more aggressive brethren.
The authors make a perfect collaboration. University of Louisville biology professor Lee Alan Dugatkin has an interest in the history of science. Geneticist Lyudmila Trut has, astonishingly, worked on the Novosibirsk project since its beginning in 1959 and added her recollections to others’ to produce the very lively tale of the taming of the foxes. I laughed and I cried and I cheered on the researchers as they worked to keep their project alive during the era when Lysenko was the face of Soviet genetics and international networking was almost impossible for Soviet scientists. I immediately fell in love with the friendly little foxes in the color photographs. I could easily see this book becoming a hit movie.
Along the way, readers will also learn a lot about the current theories on how animals (and humans?) became domesticated.
Adorable animals, dedicated scientists fighting for truth in the Soviet Union, and cutting-edge science---what’s not to like? This is a great summer read that is definitely worth your time!

[Kathryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Given that this was co-authored by Dugatkin, I was expecting this to be a popular science book, with coverage of what has been learned scientifically from the great fox domestication project started by the brilliant Dmitri Belyaev. Something that is needed badly given that much of the early work in this project was only published in Russian. Instead, this was a history of the project and a biography of Belyaev. Overall, the history is interesting in its own right, and it is amazing Belyaev and Trut were able to accomplish anything given the political and economic struggles they were in the midst of, but what little science is covered in this book is not dealt with well. Instead we are told it is amazing and expected to take the authors word for it. For those of us familiar with the fox project the hope is to find out more and it was not here, for those unfamiliar, they will gain little specific knowledge of the science that has been done.

[... · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fascinating read; highly recommended for those interested in genetics, domestication, companion species, and foxes.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book on foxes and the changes to bring the fox into a household pet. I would love to be a part of this process and rearing up.

[Egor Mikhaylov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Поразительно, конечно, что для того, чтобы узнать подробности эксперимента, проходящего в двух часах езды от моего дома, мне пришлось ждать русского перевода американской книги.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dugatkin constructs a fascinating popular science and biography of the fox domestication project in 1960s-90s USSR. The story traces the two geneticists who devoted much of their life to the project, Dmitry Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut, as well as several of the foxes who "evolved" into the domesticated pets.

I liked how Dugatkin set the stage of Soviet science, state-sponsored research, and the ways that Balyaev and Trut went about setting up and maintaining the experiments through decades of political and academic turmoil, and the speculations about humans and their own evolution (domestication?).

[Петър Стойков · Rating 5 out of 5]

Експериментът с опитомяването на сребърните лисици е един от най-важните експерименти за разбирането на процеса на одомашаване на животните, както и като цяло на наследствеността на чертите на характера.

Обичайно приписван на самостоятелно на съветския биолог Дмитри Беляев, експериментът продължава десетки години в сътрудничество с Людмила Трут по времето, когато в сталинисткия СССР генетиката е презряна като "буржоазна" наука под натиска на идиота Лисенко (прочетете за него, много е интересно).

По принцип лисиците, както и другите диви животни, не могат да станат "домашни". Дори да бъдат научени да не се страхуват от хората и дори да идват за храна, дивите животни винаги остават страхливи, агресивни и в най-добрия случай просто търпят хората, доколкото имат полза от това.

Традиционните домашни животни обаче не само търпят хората, но не се притесняват от тях и дори изглежда ги харесват. Специално кучетата пък, изглежда имат нужда от хората, харесват ги неимоверно и се привързват изключително лесно.

Двамата руски учени решават да разберат защо. Работят в далечния Сибир с ферми за сребърни лисици и успяват за няколко поколения да създадат генетична линия питомни лисици, като от всяко поколение избират лисичетата, които най-малко се плашат от хората, а после тия, които най-много ги харесват. Тия лисици започват да се държат като кучета, да ближат ръцете на хората и да търсят компанията им, предпочитайки ги пред тая на другите лисици.

Всичко това продължава и до сега, преминавайки през най-различни финансови, политически и научни перипетии, за които разказват лично Людмила и други хора, участвали и участващи в експеримента.

Не се споменава в книгата, но експериментът е важен и за изучаването на унаследяването и генетичната основа на чертите на характера. Отдавнашна теза на социологията и психологията е, че характерът на човека не е наследствен, а се създава въз основа на средата, в която израства. Съвременни изследвания сочат, че и наследствеността има значение за това и експериментът с лисиците налива още информация там.

Напишете в гугъл "pet fox" и бъдете удивени :Р

[Hilary "Fox" · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) struck a wonderful balance between the history of scientific study in Cold War era Russia and the science of animal behavior that was truly revolutionized with the famous fox experiment. The fox experiment itself is fascinating, and sorely under reported in the US. I'm so happy there's an English language book out about it now so that it might be better understood and appreciated.

The fox experiment is an ongoing study to understand the process of domestication. Belyaev began pairing the tamer foxes on fur farms with other tamer foxes and over a few generations the changes became readily apparent. He believed the bulk of the changes had to do with hormones and gene expression in a time when such theorizing was largely unheard of - now we know his beliefs to be largely correct. Even now we're still studying what has happened to create these strange, tame foxes. Domestication, while still not fully understood, is a fascinating new frontier - especially as we're beginning to understand that we, too, have been domesticated... and all that that means.

I can't recommend this book enough, nor truly summarize all of the fascinating details that lurk between its covers. This book will revolutionize the way you look at your animal companions, biology, and yourself. Get your hands on it as soon as you can - you won't regret it.

[Rossdavidh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The entire list of all the experiments that science has ever performed, if it were ever made, would be...large. But, if we limit it to only those experiments which get written about in a book (textbook or popular science or other), it would still be fairly long. If we ranked them by how often they get mentioned, then the ones at the top would probably be things like Milgram's mock electrocutions, Pavlov's ringing of bells to make dogs salivate, and the Michelson-Morley experiment that showed there is no ether. Then, there would be the experiment which is the subject of this book.

While it may not be top of the list, the breeding of domesticated foxes in Siberia is pretty close. Conceived of and begun by Dmitri Belyaev, the experiment has been going since the 1950's, and it makes for both great science and great reading.

The villain of the story is a fellow named Lysenko, who was not a great scientist, but had the excellent advantage (in the early Soviet Union) of coming from a peasant background. He did not believe in the genetic theories of Gregor Mendel, and would later say that DNA did not exist. He believed that traits we acquire could be passed on to the next generation, in a manner rather similar to Lamarck. He rose to high prominence under Stalin, and for a time made experiments such as the one Belraev wished to conduct, hazardous.

Because what Belraev wished to do, was to use artificial selection to create a tame fox. The core science that motivated him to do this, was the very ideas of genetics and evolution by selection that Lysenko denounced. By selecting in each generation for the foxes which were least averse to human presence (or, in later generations, the most eager for it), he hoped to recreate something like the process which resulted in wolves becoming dogs over 20,000 years ago.

It was a daring experiment for many reasons, not all of them political. There are numerous cases of humans trying, and failing repeatedly, to domesticate species. For example, the zebra. By committing to years of work on selecting for domestication in foxes, Belraev was gambling that the potential for it existed. If, like zebras, there just wasn't any domesticatability there to select for, then it could be years spent for no gain.

One of the co-authors of the book, Lyudmila Trut, was another scientist who joined on the project from an early stage, and as Belraev outlasted Lysenko (and the "Lysenkoists" who followed his ideas) and began to move up the ladder of Soviet science, she eventually became the person who continued to run the experiment.

The results are still coming in, over 60 years later, but some results already achieved are:
1) it is possible to breed foxes to be easy to interact with, in as few as 8 generations, by simply selecting based on the degree of aversion
2) it is also possible to breed foxes who are especially negative towards humans, who will bristle with rage at our approach
3) the friendly, domesticated foxes end up acquiring a lot of other traits, some of them physical and some of them behavioral, that were not selected for. The mechanism for becoming friendlier seems to have cascading effects.
4) among these other affects appears to be an increased ability to have sex, and puppies, more than once a year
5) many physical attributes become slightly more dog-like as the generations of selection go by, including slightly floppy ears and splotchy coloring

More recent advances have resulted from the ability to do relatively cheap DNA sequencing, and the comparison of domesticated fox DNA to their wild-type cousins sheds light on the process of domestication. At least some of the genetic changes to appear to parallel those in the wolf -> dog evolution, although there is still a lot of details to be worked out there. This is still very much a current science experiment, producing new results.

The book does not read like a science journal, though, as the very human aspects of working with the animals is an important part of the science. As the foxes become friendlier, they also become increasingly hard to resist. Given the speed with which they became domesticated, which was probably faster than the analogous process from wolf to dog, one has to wonder whether or not it was changes in human friendliness that was the limiting factor. Whatever generation of caveman (or cavewoman) who first decided to start feeding food scraps to the friendliest (or least unfriendly) of the wolves, could conceivably have seen the results of this within their own lifetimes.

Belraev also, although he is dead now, lived to see his ideas vindicated, and his experiment become of great interest not only within Russia but throughout the world. The Siberian silver fox experiment was not the only one to change our understanding of how rapid evolution could happen, but it was unquestionably one of the most important ones. Fifty years ago (or less) in the United States and elsewhere it was common to read in science textbooks that evolution could happen only slowly, over many thousands of years, for any change other than purely cosmetic, or in any animal more complex than an insect. We now know that it can happen orders of magnitude more quickly than that, fast enough that, if it were to happen (or have happened) in humans, it could produce dramatic changes in behavior in a couple centuries.

This books is a very good survey of the science, and the scientists, who carried out this experiment, and the very real obstacles they had to overcome over the course of more than half a century to keep it going. Plus, I have to say, the color glossy photographs of foxes and fox puppies, are awfully cute. I guess I'm just genetically predisposed to think that.

[Leah]

soviets in STEM

[Saturday's Child · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of course the idea of owning a domesticated fox really appeals to me so I found this to be a most interesting book. That the original foxes came from a fur farm is upsetting, as fur farms should not exist. While this book did not say it, I can’t help but wonder was the idea to breed and tame these foxes as much about being able to assist with increased and better fur production as it was for scientific purposes? It is amazing that in just a few generations these foxes have become almost like a domesticated dog and I am sure that they would be a cute pet, however at the end of the day have we not domesticated enough animals for our own purposes? For me it was a worthwhile read but I have mixed feelings about the experiment.

[Terri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book more than my heart can say. I expected a short, fluffy story about the history of the fox experiment but instead I got an amazing education in science, animal behavior, Soviet history and politics, as well as a thrilling tale of heartbreak, setbacks, and triumph over adversity. The science in this book was mind-blowing (and accessible to the lay person) - it's pretty amazing the things we (humans) have discovered through this experiment and the proving of one man's hypotheses. Belyaev single-handedly revolutionized what we know about nature vs nurture, domestication, and evolution.

[Helena]

the Soviet fox scientists have a cortisol blocking drug and it’s now my life mission to get access to that drug

[Lis Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the 1950s, a Russian biologist named Dmitry Belyaev began a dangerous experiment in fox domestication. It was dangerous not because of the foxes, but because of the primacy in Russian science of Trofim Lysenko, an agronomist who rejected Mendelian genetics. Belyaev and his partner, Lyudmila Trut, persisted anyway, working with Russian commercial silver fox farms. Initially, they presented their work as an effort to increase the productivity of the fox farms. Many domesticated animals can breed more that once a year, and this could be a great boost to productivity.

But in time, as Lysenko's grip on Soviet science faded, and as the first generations of their fox work began to show results, they were slowly able to come out of the shadow. Belyaev became director of the Institute of Cytology & Genetics, while Trut directly headed the silver fox project. She selected the calmest foxes, bred them and selected the calmest of the pups, and in just a few generations, they had calm, friendly, even affectionate foxes.

These foxes also had curly tails, floppy ears, white patches, and shorter, rounder snouts.

The domestication of the wolf is believed to have taken thousands of years. Under the controlled conditions of the fox farm that Belyaev and Trut created, Trut and her assistants produced domesticated foxes in just a decade or so. As they became more secure in their positions, and the work progressed, they also maintained unchanged control foxes, and foxes selected for aggressiveness. In the process, they learned an amazing amount about the process of domestication, that in turn teaches us about the process of the domestication of the wolf, cattle, and other animals, with insights into why some animals have been successfully domesticated and others, seemingly similar, haven't been.

This is a fascinating story, about foxes, genetics, and science, and about the effects of politics on science.

It also has both delightful stories of individual tame foxes, and pictures of incredibly cute tame foxes.

This is a definite win. Highly recommended.

I bought this book.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although it may not seem like it, this account of the Russian fox experiment is extremely biased. In between Dugatkin's ass-kissing descriptions of Dmitri Belyaev and Lyumila Trut and his gratuitous reiteration of how darn cute the foxes are, there is some decent information about how the domestication syndrome works. Moreover, as a biology-oriented person, it is hard to read Dugatkin's use of the word "pup" over and over when in fact young foxes are called fox kits, not fox pups. This detail should act as a sort of red flag for the entire narrative.

I think the book can be summed up with this quote: "One thing about the domestication of the foxes that has already been definitively determined is that they have become a new line of animal that we humans can take into our lives and love" (191).

Not once in this entire book did the scientists (or Dugatkin) ask the most important question: just because they CAN do something, does that mean that they SHOULD do it? The ethics of the experiment are swept under the rug. It seems that the authors of this text and all the scientists involved with the experiment completely forgot that they were/are dealing with live animals--animals that do not live solely to become our companions and possessions. I fail to see how breeding foxes to become pets for human consumption is inherently better than breeding foxes to become fur coats for human consumption when we consider that an incredible number of foxes died in this experiment due to immense oversights on the part of the scientists.

In short, the Russian fox experiment is worth knowing about for anyone interested in biology, domestication, evolution, and/or animal ethics. I am just not sure that this is the book to best inform people about the complications surrounding the experiment and any endeavors like it.

[Maddie]

I would like to pet a fox pls

[Valarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’ve read books on dog behavior, you’ve likely heard of the Russian fox experiment. I’m so glad I read this book because it provides so many details I’ve always wondered about this study. For instance, I had no idea it was still going on! The information we’ve learned about genetic inheritance and domestication are amazing! I don’t think I’ll be signing up to adopt a tame fox. I did listen to the audiobook though, so I probably shouldn’t look for photos of them or I might change my mind :)

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing. Going through the history of how the experiment for taming foxes began and to where it is today. I laughed and I certainly cried my eyes out at certain parts. The book is easy to read, and not the least bit boring in my opinion.
I've met Lee Alan Dugatkin in person and he is very nice and passionate about this book and these foxes.
Definitely recommended.

[Versuvio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most amazing and interesting book! Read right through it. Exceeded expectations by far.

[LG (A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions) · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1959, two Russian geneticists, Dmitry Belyayev and Lyudmila Trut, began a selective breeding experiment to see if they could witness the process leading to domestication. They weren't sure that it would work or, if it did, whether it would happen quickly enough for them to witness the results. Fortunately for them, their experiment was successful, eventually resulting in foxes that displayed some of the same behavioral and morphological features present in dogs, which allowed them to then more closely study how their wild and tame foxes differed from each other in terms of hormone production, vocalizations, etc.

The first half of this book was more heavily focused on Soviet-era history and politics and the way they influenced this experiment. Due to Trofim Lysenko's restrictions on genetic research (Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetics), Belyayev and Trut had to be careful how they presented their experiment. In order to cover up their true intentions, they worked at a fox fur farm and claimed they were studying fox physiology in order to see if some foxes could be bred more frequently and therefore be more useful to the fur trade. While this portion was interesting, and I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the increasingly tame new generations of foxes, I went into this expecting it to be more of a popular science book and was a bit disappointed at how little science was discussed.

The second half focused a little more on scientific topics: gene activation and expression, the science of domestication, the idea of humans as "self-domesticated," studying fox vocalizations, etc. The cynical part of me sometimes wondered if the sudden increase in scientific background info was intended to distract readers from the rough patch (to put it mildly) that the fox domestication experiment hit after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Due to a sudden lack of funding, they had trouble keeping the foxes alive and had to resort to killing some of them (the book said they focused on the wild ones rather than tame, but still) and selling their fur for money.

I don't do well with print nonfiction so I listened to this instead. Unfortunately, it was a little hard for me to follow along during some of the more science-heavy portions. Also, apparently the print version has pictures of the foxes, so I missed out on that.

While I don't regret listening to this, it was too heavy on Soviet politics and history for me to call it a good popular science book. I'm also fairly certain that it wasn't a balanced look at the fox domestication experiment, and not only because Lyudmila Trut was one of the co-authors. The text was filled with fawning praise of Dmitry Belyayev - he had bucketloads of charisma and was apparently good to everyone. I couldn't help but note the one mention in the text of the time someone brought up potential ethical issues with one of his ideas (can't remember the specifics, something to do with chimps, maybe?) and the way he dismissed them as "short-sighted."

The way the domesticated fox descriptions were handled also seemed overly glowing. The narrator's tone warmed every time he described the foxes playing, bonding with their handlers, or doing cute things - I mean, yes, the foxes were fun, but the line between "these foxes are part of an experiment" and "these foxes are cute pets" was really blurred. And then the Institute really did start selling some of the foxes as pets. I had to laugh as Lyudmila Trut's supposed concern that she might not find enough people willing to take in foxes as pets - there are plenty of people who literally try to keep tigers and wolves as pets, so I imagine the real concern was more with whether there'd be enough people willing to pay handsomely for them and then deal with the issues involved with having an exotic pet, not that the book touched on that aspect at all. Plus, from what I've read even "tame" foxes have behavioral quirks you can't train them out of - again, not touched on in this book at all.

Overall, this made for a decent enough few hours of listening, but it felt pretty biased and people looking for a more science-focused read will probably be disappointed.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

[Nancy Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely LOVED this book. Remarkable research project on a Siberian fur farm that revealed how astoundingly fast evolution can work. Within about 12 generations wild foxes were selectively bred to turn into docile, friendly, loving pets. In evolutionary terms, that's like a nanosecond. Not just their nature and behavior, either. They wound up with shorter, more babyish snouts, floppy ears, and piebald markings, all side effects of selectively breeding for tameness. Their social skills with regard to humans, their reproductive cycles, and their genetic evolution were found to totally parallel the evolution of dogs from wolves.
The researchers became extremely attached to these little creatures, understandably, and the dissolution of the USSR caused a crisis in funding the feeding and care of the foxes, with tragic results, but with much effort, the project was saved and as of 2017, the foxes were still being studied and even adopted out as household pets.
Truly one of the best books I've read this year!

[Beige Alert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book - short, straightforward and to-the-point. I enjoyed it, but I wish that one of the researchers hadn't been involved in writing it unfortunately. It's kind of a long-form fluff piece even if it's a good one.

Dugatkin avoids the ethics of the experiment all together in favor of just how gosh darned loved these foxes are/were. The only violence against them comes at the hands of rogue fur pirates who murder some tame ones living in the house in the middle of the night. Oh, and a few hundred starve to death because of glasnost. A better book would have addressed some of the ethical and methodological issues head-on, but you'll have to find that elsewhere.

When the book turns contemplative towards the end and ponders destabilizing selection and tameness in more animals, including humans, it made me curious about the ascension of beta human men within emerging western matriarchies, and what we need to feed the alphas to fully embrace a peaceful future of interdependence.

Twinkies and Big Macs don't seem to be working.

More quinoa?


WTR - 603

[Robin Mandell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding. Superbly written. Also, women in STEM for the win.

[Riccardo Mirabelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Si può arrivare alle ultime pagine di un saggio con gli occhi lucidi dalla commozione?
Un libro che ne contiene almeno tre dentro: c'è il rigoroso saggio di etologia e genetica, c'è il racconto dei 60 anni di uno degli esperimenti più visionari della storia e poi c'è il racconto storico del regime sovietico dalla fine della seconda guerra mondiale fino al suo disfacimento visto dagli occhi di due scienziati: Dimitrij Belyaev e Ljudmilla Trut.

Un libro che parla di scienza ma anche del grande amore per le volpi e per un uomo straordinario come Belyaev.

[Sung Won · Rating 4 out of 5]

무려 60년째에 접어든, 생물학 역사상 최장기간에 걸친 실험이었던 "은여우 길들이기"에 대한 책이다. 유전학을 반동적이라고 탄압하던 스탈린/리센코 치하의 소련에서 은여우 가죽 생산을 늘리기 위한 연구인 것으로 포장되었던 이 실험은, 사실은 야생동물의 가축화에 대한 실험이었다. "상대적으로 온순한 여우"라는 단 하나의 기준으로 선택 교배한 결과, 성격 뿐 아니라 외형과 생식 면에서도 가축화된 동물의 일반적인 특징을 지닌 여우가 탄생하였다. 성격과 외형 면에서는 유아기의 특징이 커서도 유지되는 성장 지연이 일어난 반면, 생식 능력은 오히려 더 빨리 성숙하고 번식 주기도 짧아졌다. 옥시토신, 세로토닌, 멜라토닌은 증가한 반면, 각종 스트레스 호르몬 수치는 떨어졌다고.

쉽게 읽어지는 것이 장점이기도 하지만, 조금 더 과학적 디테일을 더했으면 좋았을듯. 책을 읽고 나도 궁금한 점이 많이 남는다. Young Adult science book이라고 보면 될 듯.

[Federico Capone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Come Addomesticare una Volpe racconta di uno degli esperimenti più lunghi mai eseguiti, sessant'anni di esperimento sullo studio del processo di domesticazione, applicato alle volpi. E soprattutto parla delle persone che l'hanno eseguito, soprattutto Ljudmila Trut (coautrice) e Dimitri Beljaev, ideatore del progetto, e delle varie difficoltà che hanno avuto nel portare avanti un esperimento simile nella URSS.

Il libro è un bel racconto di un bell'esperimento, che ci ricorda che la scienza è fatta di ipotesi e di tentativi verificarle (e confutarle). È anche un omaggio a Dimitri, "protagonista" in tutti i capitoli, e un modo di presentare dei volti meno conosciuti della Russia ai tempo della cortina di ferro.

Tanti sono i messaggi importanti che si possono trarre da questo libro, ma per citarne i due più importanti:
1-con tutta probabilità noi umani non siamo che scimmie addomesticate.
2-da qualche parte in Russia c'è un allevamento in cui è possibile (devo solo capire come) adottare una specie dj volpe addomesticata.