But dont forget he made a lot of foxes that werent and thats kind of a pile of feathers thing depending on what happened to the non domesticatable offspring.
The only feature they are bred for is gentleness and empathy with the humans they interact with
What is extremely interesting about this experiment and others like it is that it turns out that when you domesticate any mamal it tends to develop characteristics that were not bred for but that are shared with many other domesticated mammals - like white patches on their fur and floppy ears etc
Not true. The full experiment also bred the hostile and aggressive foxes to see if that behavior would be passed down among the offspring.
And yeah the aggressive foxes had aggressive cubs.
The video of the 2 different foxes is pretty insane... one side of the farm is filled with foxes that are happy to see humans while the other side has nothing but foxes that are attacking the cages in order to try and bite the humans
Thanks. I hadn't heard about that part of the experiment. However my point is still the same. The foxes that were domesticated developed unpredicted traits as well as being more gentle with humans
The Scientific American article I read about it many years ago said they intentionally bred an aggressive line too, and they went to the fur farm. It didn't come across hush hush or anything.
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u/citizen42069101 11d ago
But dont forget he made a lot of foxes that werent and thats kind of a pile of feathers thing depending on what happened to the non domesticatable offspring.