r-strategist Foxes – Russian Domesticated Foxes

A reader posted the link in the comments:

The Russian Domesticated Red Fox is a domesticated form of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes). As a result of selective breeding, the new foxes became tamer and more dog-like…

The least domesticated foxes, those that flee from experimenters or bite when stroked or handled, are assigned to Class III. Foxes in Class II let themselves be petted and handled but show no emotionally friendly response to experimenters. Foxes in Class I are friendly toward experimenters, wagging their tails and whining. In the sixth generation bred for tameness we had to add an even higher-scoring category. Members of Class IE, the “domesticated elite”, are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of fox pups were elite; by the 20th, the figure had reached 35 percent. Today elite foxes make up 70 to 80 percent of our experimentally selected population.[1]

Belyaev and Trut believe that selecting for tameness mimics the natural selection that must have occurred in the ancestral past of dogs, and, more than any other quality, must have determined how well an animal would adapt to life among humans.

The result is that Russian scientists now have a number of domesticated foxes that are fundamentally different in temperament and behavior from their wild forebears. Some important changes in physiology and morphology are now visible, such as mottled or spotted colored fur. Many scientists believe that these changes related to selection for tameness are caused by lower adrenaline production in the new breed, causing physiological changes in very few generations and thus yielding genetic combinations not present in the original species. This indicates that selection for tameness (i.e., low flight distance) produces changes that are also influential on the emergence of other dog-like traits, such as raised tail and coming into heat every six months rather than annually.

Notice they are selecting for reduced amygdala-activity as measured through response to threat with flight or biting, and they get increased reproductive output. It is interesting that what you would think is a hormonally mediated biological mechanism like coming into heat would appear likely to be linked somehow to cognitive processing structures.

r/K Theory is everywhere.