Re: Pet Fox/Wolf Hybrids
I definitely agree with Thal that it is not advisable to own a wild animal. It is not true that simply keeping an animal with humans will make it 'tame' or bring out the behaviours we see in our domesticated species. There is a very well-known and ongoing experiment being conducted by a fur farm in Siberia using the silver fox that started (I think) sometime in the 1950s in which specimens are being selected for tameness. This has given zoologists some fascinating genetic data and we've learned a lot about domestication, including answering the question of why dogs display such variation in their physical appearance, while being almost identical to the wolf genetically (with some people arguing they simply are wolves!).
There are a lot of characteristics that only appear after a few generations of selecting positively for this tameness. Eye contact for example; dogs will look at the face while wolves and foxes don't; barking, submissiveness, and oddly, variation in coat colour, length of snout, and ears. So even if tame varieties can be selected for, they'd stop looking like wolves and foxes, and just look like dogs anyway.
I don't remember where it was carried out, but there was an experiment done with permission of a zoo, in which a litter of wolves were taken from their mum and raised by various handlers. This was to see if they could be taught to bond with humans. To begin with, they did form attachments to their human handlers, but as they grew and approached maturity, they became increasingly difficult to handle. They ignored commands, jumped up on tables to take food from people's plates, snacked at family members as they competed for rank within the group, and eventually had to be returned to the zoo to live their lives as a pack.
Basically, if you want a tame wolf, get a dog. That's exactly what a dog is after all.
I definitely agree with Thal that it is not advisable to own a wild animal. It is not true that simply keeping an animal with humans will make it 'tame' or bring out the behaviours we see in our domesticated species. There is a very well-known and ongoing experiment being conducted by a fur farm in Siberia using the silver fox that started (I think) sometime in the 1950s in which specimens are being selected for tameness. This has given zoologists some fascinating genetic data and we've learned a lot about domestication, including answering the question of why dogs display such variation in their physical appearance, while being almost identical to the wolf genetically (with some people arguing they simply are wolves!).
There are a lot of characteristics that only appear after a few generations of selecting positively for this tameness. Eye contact for example; dogs will look at the face while wolves and foxes don't; barking, submissiveness, and oddly, variation in coat colour, length of snout, and ears. So even if tame varieties can be selected for, they'd stop looking like wolves and foxes, and just look like dogs anyway.
I don't remember where it was carried out, but there was an experiment done with permission of a zoo, in which a litter of wolves were taken from their mum and raised by various handlers. This was to see if they could be taught to bond with humans. To begin with, they did form attachments to their human handlers, but as they grew and approached maturity, they became increasingly difficult to handle. They ignored commands, jumped up on tables to take food from people's plates, snacked at family members as they competed for rank within the group, and eventually had to be returned to the zoo to live their lives as a pack.
Basically, if you want a tame wolf, get a dog. That's exactly what a dog is after all.
Comment