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Comments: 347 + - Science: 50 Years of Domesticating Foxes For Science on Saturday December 26 2009, @09:17AM
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gamebittk writes "In 1959, Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev set out to breed a tamer fox that would be easier for their handlers in the Russian fur industry to work with. Much to the scientist's shock, changes no one had expected emerged after just 10 generations. The foxes began behaving playfully, were smaller in size, and even changed color — much like dogs."
Belyaev died in 1985, but the experiment continued (PDF) in his absence, and to this day provides strong evidence to parts of evolutionary theory. The experiment eventually branched out to involve other species as well.
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cool new pets! (Score:5, Interesting)
I want one! Foxes are cute and smaller than dogs but clever like cats.
If they have bred them to be more behaved they would probably be good house pets for urban dwellers. Foxes are pretty adaptable anyway, living off the scraps of society for a few hundred years already. It's mostly people that keep them out of populated places. That's how man started taming dogs and cats.
Radiolab - New Nice (Score:2, Informative)
WNYC's Radiolab recently did a story on this subject too. The program is split into 3 parts, and the last one is about these foxes. To get a better sense of what the program is about, I would suggest listening to the whole episode. An hour well spent.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/10/02 [wnyc.org]
The same thing happened to me with a Fox ... (Score:5, Funny)
First, it was a wild fox, quick and smart.
After a few years, it became playful, domesticated, slow, stupid, and unstable. I'm on Chrome now. ;)
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The pursuit of truth is sometimes ruff, uh, rough, I say.
Re:History (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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the atomic bomb is only a bad thing if used on a massive global scale
I've been to Hiroshima: You're full of shit.
look at how the American press freaked out when the death toll hit 3000 in the Iraq war YEARS after the war started.
Documented body count of civilians [iraqbodycount.org]: Around a hundred thousand.
But you, you only count enlisted US military personnel. You don't even count the contractors... you disgust me.
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>>I've been to Hiroshima: You're full of shit.
You probably haven't been to Nanking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
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Not just all people in love, but all things. I suppose if man makes real strides towards such an idyllic world it's very bad.
I think it's a good thing to strive for a peaceful world and a bad thing to create people who can only live in a peaceful world.
Re:History (Score:4, Interesting)
"Most sad thing about it was that they had camps where they trained 5-6 year old boys to exercise physically and to mentally think without fear of enemy, while learning military tactics and strategies."
[citation needed]
USSR was not nice. But creating zombies? It's just a fantasy. This video might have been taken in Afghanistan or Chechnya, if it's real at all.
Parent
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"Most sad thing about it was that they had camps where they trained 5-6 year old boys to exercise physically and to mentally think without fear of enemy, while learning military tactics and strategies."
That’s an invention of the Prussian era. It’s called “school”! ^^ (Seriously! That’s the point and how school started. And you wondered why it’s so dull, just trains people to follow without thinking and also to do automate tasks.)
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I'm glad I'd dodged that one :)
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Sooo...when gods play gods it isn't scary? ;p
Besides, something always happens eventually; at least until we are long way off the heat death of the universe.
Re:History (Score:5, Insightful)
"Never the less, it's always scary when humans play god. Something is going to happen eventually, so should be really careful about it."
We are talking about breeding foxes here. Just like breeding dogs/cats/horses/plants, which is done by tens of thousands (hundreds? millions?) of people the world over, and has been for thousands of years.
Parent
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The key with domesticated animals is that they don't typically do as well in the wild. If you look at something like American Mustangs that are the runaways they went "native" and are their own unique breed now. You do have some ecology issues, but in the case of the Mustangs, we killed off all the Buffalo all by ourselves.. the horses fill much of the same niche roaming the plains. The biggest problem with domesticated animals is that we people put up fences and displace wild animals over vast areas so the
Playing God (Score:5, Informative)
All our science and technology is based on the idea that we can understand, control, and improve nature.
Playing God, in the Xn tradition, is creatio ex nihilo. Tweaking nature - even with catastrophic results - is not playing God.
Parent
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GP may be a troll, but is more off topic than anything else. This experiment didn't modify genes or dna. It was simple breeding (in this case domestication through human selection). The results of this study show how quickly animal species can be domesticated and show a potential path for wolves to have been domesticated while living on the fringes of human settlements.
Sopssa said, "Never the less, it's always scary when humans play god. Something is going to happen eventually, so should be really carefu
Cold War Dog Fight Joke (Score:5, Funny)
When the cages were opened up, the Dachshund came out of it's cage and slowly waddled over towards the Russian dog. The Russian dog snarled and leaped out of it's cage and charged the American dachshund. But, when it got close enough to bite the Dachshund's neck, the Dachshund opened it's mouth and consumed the Russian dog in one bite. There was nothing left at all of the Russian dog.
The Russians came up to the Americans shaking their heads in disbelief. 'We don't understand how this could have happened. We had our best people working for five years with the meanest Doberman and Rottweiler in the world and the biggest meanest Siberian wolves." That's nothing", an American replied."We had our best plastic surgeons working for five years to make an alligator look like a Dachshund."
Parent
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The Russians found the biggest meanest Doberman and Rottweiler dogs in the world and bred them with the biggest meanest Siberian wolves.
Fun Fact:
Why would Russians bother with breeding Doberman and Rottweilers when they already have something much bigger and stronger [wikipedia.org]?
Another Fun Fact:
Google for recent events in Georgia, Grozny or Azerbaijan and you'll discover their owners are no less intimidating than their dogs. Apparently, the locals consider bear hunting with Ovcharkas as "sport".
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Never the less, it's always scary when humans play god. Something is going to happen eventually, so should be really careful about it.
I hate to break this to you, but there's no one left to play god if we don't do it.
Re:Evolution - NOT! (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you don't think it's a valid method, why don't you try it with an UN-gloved hand and report back to us? :-)
If you've worked with big dogs (not those little under-100-pound "pretend-dogs"), you'll *know* when you've been bit.
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Still relevant to our understanding (Score:4, Insightful)
If nothing else, this is relevant in so far as illustrating how much behavior and physiology can change by the modification of a single simple and seemingly unrelated hereditary trait.
The long and arduous road of chance modifications to the organisms genome isn't necessary to explain these expressed traits specifically, when these simple modifications can cause entire systems to behave differently. It's whole other way of looking at natural selection.
It's not as though we haven't heard Creationists' arguments hinging upon the expectation that every step in evolution depends on a perfect storm of genetic error...
Parent
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Evolution - Has new genetic information been added? Or has existing information, already within the genome been lost through selective breeding. The latter I think! Foxes still produce after their kind and their offspring are still foxes (albeit with less genetic material than their progenitors)
Information is a rather abstract concept.
The digit "1" ... how much information does that contain? Is it an "on" state? Does it symbolize a single object? Is it being used instead of an "i"? What if we stick a "0" digit beside it... "10" - is that ten? Or just two? Or maybe an "on" state and an "off" state? How much information is contained in those digits? If I move from a binary system to a decimal system, have I created more information? Lost information?
Just because somebody is born with webbe
Re:Evolution - NOT! (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that comes into my head when I hear the word "evolution" is a process by which life as we know it developed from very, very simple organisms.
Well, yes... And then those very, very simple organisms became less simple... And then those less simple organisms became just simple... And then those simple organisms became kind of complex...
Just because an organism is currently fairly complex, doesn't mean evolution has somehow magically stopped. Evolution is happening everywhere, 24/7.
The process mentioned in the article is not this.
Yes it is.
It's being guided by human beings, instead of natural forces... And it's been taking place over a short timeframe... But it's still evolution. The exact same kind of stuff that created all the biodiversity on this planet.
No new genetic information has been added to the gene pool.
Again the "information" word.
If I breed a new kind of fox with black fur, instead of red... Is that new information? Is that more information, or less? What if some fox randomly mutates and is born with neon green fur? Is that new information? More information? Less?
All that has occurred is that existing genes have been rearranged.
Well, but that's kind of the point.
I mean, we've only got the four bases... They can only combine in so many different ways... It's all about the order of the base pairs.
Just like binary - you've only got two digits, it's the order that matters.
You cannot continue the same process and get a cow or an elephant.
Probably not. Not because this isn't evolution, but because those are two very specific and unique species. It would take a hell of a lot of work, and more understanding than we currently have, to turn a fox into an elephant.
But, if we were to keep this up long enough we could very well wind up with an entirely new non-fox species.
The way mutations are worked into the gene pool seems, to me, to be the main interesting thing about evolution, and this article has nothing to do that.
Mutations are essential to biodiversity. They're what introduce new and different things.
Which is specifically why they're avoided and weeded out in selective breeding. With selective breeding you have a specific trait that you are intentionally trying to emphasize. You want to avoid random mutation as much as possible and, to the best of your ability, produce a predictable result.
Also, now I really want a pet fox.
Agreed.
Parent
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You cannot continue the same process and get a cow or an elephant.
Are you sure? I'd be willing to wager that over a couple of thousand generations or so, with the correct breeding practices, one could create something very Elephant or Cow-like.
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...you commit a sin of arrogance in pretending to know how things work...
I like to call it "Malicious Ignorance". It is a disease that about 80% of people are afflicted with
Re:Cue the master race discussion (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are in a white area, white people are viewed as part of the family, whereas black people are "different". I'm pretty sure people in the African jungles view white people as they scary ones, especially the ones who want to chop the jungle down.
Parent
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It's not that simple either: One man that look real different from yourself: "Oooh, look, fresh genetic material for to help our tribe surivive!" Ten men that look different from you "Aaaaah, they're going to wipe out our tribe!"
Re:Cue the master race discussion (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, well, you started it, didn't you? Of course, like all master race discussions, yours appears to start with a couple of false assumptions and goes from there.
"As I read through the article, blue eyes, fair skin and hair were as indicated as behavior."
No, they weren't. Even the short article notes that Belyaev selected foxes based on which ones snapped at him when he offered his hand. Changes in coat colour (similar to those observed in dogs vs. wolves) were noted as a surprising incidental result. The more recent actual paper also linked mentions that those changes are likely a side effect of general changes in the timing of development, and are similar to mechanisms seen in dogs.
"And in the articles, it was by selective breeding with these patterns in mind, that these new foxes and rats were created."
No, it wasn't.
"I am trying to avoid presenting this as an argument for racism, but I think it is almost instinctive that darker skinned people are more feared than lighter skinned people."
All your arguments for this belief are heavily based on what is likely your society of origin, the US, which has and continues to have a very uneven relationship with people who have dark skin.
Parent
One sliiiight problem with that idea... (Score:3, Informative)
Vikings.
You know.. those blue-eyed, fair-skinned, fair-haired sissies that have found time to discover America during their break of looting and pillaging across Europe.
Anecdotal evidence such as that might point us to a crazy idea that human beings are not foxes.
That they don't eat like foxes, breed like foxes, live as long as foxes, socialize like foxes or THINK like foxes.
And therein lies the proverbial pudding* - we didn't really evolve that much since we got ourselves these big brainy things that we us
Re:One sliiiight problem with that idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
"we didn't really evolve that much since we got ourselves these big brainy things that we use for thinking."
This isn't true, actually. We did evolve, and a lot too (because although not much time has passed, populations are much higher). The thing is, it's not the "evolution" of racial theorists, of bigger brains or better skills. It's mostly resistance to disease, and adaption to more monotonous diets. When you have a population of half a billion, and half of them die from disease and/or malnutrition before reaching maturity, there's a lot of selection pressure, even over a few generations. Especially since we're talking about new diseases (big crowd diseases) and new diets ("high carb"...) that we haven't already spent millions of years adapting to.
(I guess disease and malnutrition is what keeps seagull population stable as well, but there it is in the form it has always been - they're probably pretty well optimized to it already)
Parent
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I think it is almost instinctive that darker skinned people are more feared than lighter skinned people.
Yup, you're racist alright.
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Am I the only one who noticed that when lighter skinned people are frightened they squeal like little girls while darker skinned people tend to lash out often striking whatever it is that caused a fearful reaction? Are there exceptions to these patterns?
This is what is called "observation bias". Observations that confirm your expectations and biases are remembered while the observations that don't confirm your expectations and biases are discounted as "exceptions to these patterns". Simply put, another explanation for these differences in reactions (assuming they exist in the first place) is cultural. And even a century ago, the "lighter skinned people" behaved more physically aggressive than they do now.
As an aside, there's nothing about humans that is
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The Marine replied, "God was busy, so He sent me.
That's it? Come on. I take all this time to read this *compelling story* hoping for something profound and you give me the same quote again. Please. For once I am going to burn karma and answer a troll. I don't give a shit about whether one believes in God or not, but I do believe in making the story end well. At least one better ending would have the Marine die, go to heaven with God standing there waiting. "What the fuck marine, I got you a seat in a college course even though your dumb as a brick
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One of the passers-by took out a gun and shot the marine dead. As the marine lay dying, his la gasp was a question - "How dare you defy God?"
The passer-by said "Darwin was busy, so he sent me!"
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While all people are not the same, who gets to decide what features are "important" or "better"? Right now we use the "market" system of allowing all the people to compete as equally as we can so that ability or even luck is the primary decider. As history shows BAD THINGS HAPPEN when somebody starts deciding what are "good" people and what are "extra" people. Yes, it still happens every day, but civilized people have chosen not to do that.
In reality that's how humans have evolved though. We tend to flock
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In this fox experiment, genes determined both behavior and physical appearance. Intelligence is clearly an element of behavior. We should not shy away from the obvious implications for human evolution.
Humankind would necessarily undergo the same sort of evolutionary changes. We can expect differences in behavior among the different races and ethnic groups. Evolution changed both the color of the skin and the type of behavior. Intelligence is one form of behavior.
The belief that all races and all ethnic groups have identical intelligence and identical levels of violent behavior or passive behavior is simply an assumption -- without proof.
I doubt anybody moderately intelligent would believe that all ethnic groups have "identical intelligence" or "identical levels of violent behavior or passive behavior", considering how not even within the same ethnic group you can find "identical intelligence" or "identical levels of etc", due to the substantial influence of things such as culture, education and personal and communal experience. Differences are indeed easily spotted within the same ethnic group in communities not distant from each other (th
Breeding Sucks (Score:2)
I saw a documentary years ago. After the British pulled out of India they abandoned many pedigreed, pure bred dogs to fend for themselves. After a few generations the dogs started to look like dingos or wolves.
Breeding animals sucks.
I have met so many wonderful animals who have so many health problems as the result of breeding.
Just leave the animals alone.
Re:Evolutionary Theory (Score:4, Insightful)
Certain ideas about them being seperate species are about to shatter some of the ideas of evolutionary theory,
How is that an argument against evolution? One of the points of evolution is that there are no clear cut boundaries between species. Sometimes you have animals that are close enough related that they can bread and produce offsprings and sometimes they are not and thus can't. And well, sometimes they are somewhere in the middle and they can only produce infertile offsprings (tiger+lion, mule+horse, etc.).
Secondly, it is not clear even from a biological point of view how a new complex system can arise by random chance
Its not random chance, its the selection process that does the work.
Third and finally, there are certain things about the theory that the laws of thermodynamics seem to be in violation, particularly entropy which states systems move from complexity to simplicity, not the other way around.
Thats only true for closed systems, earth is not a closed system (hint: big glowing day-star is shining plenty of energy on us).
Parent
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I think that the statement it proves evolutionary theory is a bit, strong.
Indeed, it's just another tick in the very crowded check box of proven. No need to over hype it.
Rest of your post: tl;dr
Re:Evolutionary Theory (Score:5, Informative)
Oh you creationists are so determinedly ignorant.
It's perfectly clear how organs can result from evolution in a gradual series of steps. Here Richard Dawkins explains exactly for the evolution of the eyeball in so simple a way a way a child could understand. You'd benefit from watching the whole thing, but if you want to cut to the chase, the eye section starts at about 23 minutes in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT1vXXMsYak [youtube.com]
Parent
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I think that the statement it proves evolutionary theory is a bit, strong
Right, it would be more precise to say that it's evidence in support of some aspects of evolutionary theory.
people get confused about certain things like, a species ability to adapt to its environment, is that it fails to explain how a completely different species evolves
When things adapt in enough different ways they become something completely different.
Certain ideas about them being seperate species are about to shatter som