Could foxes be the new dogs?
In previous eras, US presidents were not expected to connect to the everyday-man, but instead wanted to appear powerful in order to get elected. Many had exotic pets that allowed voters to understand that these men were rich enough to afford buying a rare and dangerous animal, and were macho enough to control it. Herbert Hoover had two alligators he kept as pets. Calvin Coolidge had a collection of pets that included a black bear, a duiker, a wallaby, and a pygmy hippopotamus. He also had two lion cubs who he named Tax Reduction and Budget Bureau. Roosevelt had a pet badger named Josiah and a pet hyena named Bill. However, owning a lion is incredibly different from owning a house cat, in that lions lack the domesticity cats do. And while trained animals appear to be accustomed to people and can learn tricks, these animals have been tamed, not domesticated. Domesticity is biological, there is a genetic component to domesticating animals, whereas tameness is something you can teach only animals with certain temperaments.
Just after World War II, a man named Dmitry Belyaev started an experiment to learn more about the domestication of dogs. He sought out to selectively breed foxes based on their willingness to interact with humans in the hopes of discovering a genetic link to domesticity as, at the time, little was known about why dogs and cats were domesticated while other animals were not. He chose foxes as they are in the family canidae, like dogs, but are still distant enough to be a good model for other species. In his experiment, domesticity was determined by the fox kit’s willingness to be fed by hand, pet by humans while being fed, and their level of interest in being around humans instead of other foxes. After 7-8 months, when they reached sexual maturity, they were ranked based on their domesticity. Class I was the most domesticated, Class III was the most hostile. Only the top Class I foxes would be bred (avoiding inbreeding) and after only six generations they needed to add another class, Class IE, for the “domesticated elite” foxes. After ten generations 18% of the kits were in Class IE and by the twentieth generation it had increased to 35%. These elite foxes loved and craved interactions from people. They would whimper for attention, jump in people’s laps to cuddle, lick their faces, wag their tails with excitement upon seeing people they recognized. The foxes were quickly starting to behave more like dogs than like wild foxes.
As the experiment went on researchers found that the Class IE foxes were not only displaying behavioral changes but also physical ones. As each generation of foxes became more domestic, characteristics that are absent in wild populations began to emerge. These traits included spotted fur, shorter and more curled tails, and floppy ears. There were also chemical changes in the foxes, after 20 generations the level of corticosteroids (hormones involved in responding to stress) had dropped to a quarter the levels found in wild foxes. They also had less active adrenal glands and increased serotonin production resulting in foxes that were much calmer, less startle-prone, and less aggressive. Essentially, these foxes weren’t only starting to act more like dogs, they were starting to look and function more like them too. All of these changes and the quick proliferation through generations was strong evidence supporting Belyaev’s idea that domesticity is a genetic trait instead of learned.
The Russian fox experiment has been going on for sixty years now, but as funding decreased they were forced to begin selling the foxes. The non-domesticated foxes were sold to fur farms, but the elite foxes started being sold as pets. You can purchase a Russian domesticated fox for only US$9000, so long as you live in a country or state which allows them, and can get the proper permits.
Having a pet fox may seem like it would be fun but there is one issue: even when domesticated, foxes make for truly terrible pets. Owning a pet fox, or any exotic pet for that matter, requires flexibility and dedication. Owners must be willing to invest a lot of time, energy, and money into their pets if they want them to be at all happy and healthy. Foxes are incredibly intelligent but this does not translate into trainability, they do not easily learn commands. They are very curious animals and are known to be destructive as a result. They need a large outdoor enclosure with high fences that go deep into the ground since foxes love to dig, their urine smells like skunk and can only be cleaned with special chemicals. If your neighbors don’t like your fox being in the area you can be legally forced to give it up or move. Even if they are domesticated pet foxes can still be bad with other pets, destructive, difficult to feed, unable to be housebroken, loud, and smelly. Dogs, instead of other species, became “man’s best friend” for reasons beyond simply being domesticated. They are relatively low maintenance.
People will keep buying domestic pets for the same reason US presidents used to: to seem powerful, rich, unique, interesting. Knowing that domesticity can be bred and fostered in populations of animals, and it can be possible to recognize domesticated versions of species from their non-domesticated counterparts by sight, it seems exotic pets may become the new norm. However, foxes, and other species, will never take the place of dogs because there is more to being a good pet than simply being domesticated.