Urban Foxes May Be Self-Domesticating In Our Midst

sciencehabit quotes Science magazine: In a famous Siberian experiment carried out the 1950s, scientists turned foxes into tame, doglike canines by breeding only the least aggressive ones generation after generation. The creatures developed stubby snouts, floppy ears, and even began to bark. Now, it appears that some rural red foxes in the United Kingdom are doing this on their own. When the animals moved from the forest to city habitats, they began to evolve doglike traits, new research reveals, potentially setting themselves on the path to domestication...

Most significantly, the urban foxes, like those in the Russian experiment, had noticeably shorter and wider muzzles, and smaller brains, than their rural fellows. And males and females had very similar skull shapes. All of these changes are typical of what Charles Darwin labeled domestication syndrome.

Overall, urban foxes' skulls seemed to be designed for a stronger bite than were those of rural foxes, which are shaped for speed. Perhaps that's because in the city, a fox can simply stand at a human trash pile and feed on the food we've tossed out, where they may encounter more bones that can only be crushed with stronger jaws, Parsons speculates. Still, he emphasizes that the urban red foxes are not domesticated. But the study does show how exposure to human activity can set an animal down this path, says Melinda Zeder, an emeritus archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.

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