The cubs were beginning to behave more like dogs. They wagged their tails and "eagerly" sought contact with humans. They whined, whimpered and licked researchers just like puppies would.
The foxes could 'read' human cues and respond correctly to gestures or glancesThe process was surprisingly quick. "By intense selective breeding, we have compressed into a few decades an ancient process that originally unfolded over thousands of years," wrote Trut in 1999.
These foxes were called the "elite of domestication", and as the generations passed the proportion of these elite cubs grew. By 2005-2006, almost all the foxes were playful, friendly and behaving like domestic dogs. The foxes could "read" human cues and respond correctly to gestures or glances. The vocalisations they made were different to wild foxes.
"The proudest moment for us was creating a unique population of genetically tame foxes, the only the one in the world," says Trut.
Brian Hare Brian hare is associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina and author of the 2013 book The Genius of Dogs. He travelled to Russia on the Trans-Siberian railroad to visit the farm, in order to compare fox cubs with dog puppies for a study published in 2005.
It was a risky area of research.
About 10% of the foxes displayed a weak 'wild-response', meaning they were docile around humansThe study of genetics had been essentially banned in the USSR, as the country's dictator Joseph Stalin sought to discredit the genetic principles set out by Gregor Mendel. Stalin's death in 1953 gave scientists more freedom, but in the early years Belyaev nevertheless worked under the cover that he was breeding foxes to make better fur coats.
First, Belyaev and Trut travelled to various fur farms in the Soviet Union, from Siberia to Moscow and Estonia. There, they chose foxes to take to their own farm in Novosibirsk.
They selected the animals based on how they responded when their cage was opened. About 10% of the foxes displayed a weak "wild-response", meaning they were docile around humans.
"The main task at this stage of selection was eliminating defensive reactions to humans," Trut wrote in 1999. Animals that were friendlier and tolerant to human touch, even to a small degree, were picked out. Those that hid in the corner or made aggressive vocalisations were left in the farm.
Of those friendly foxes, 100 vixens and 30 males were chosen as the first generations of parents
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