For the last 59 years a team of Russian geneticists led by Lyudmila Trut have been running one of the most important biology experiments of the 20th, and now 21st, century. The experiment was the brainchild of Trut’s mentor, Dmitri Belyaev, who, in 1959, began an experiment to study the process of domestication in real time. He was especially keen on understanding the domestication of wolves to dogs, but rather than use wolves, he used silver foxes as his subjects. Here, I provide a brief overview of how the silver fox domestication study began and what the results to date have taught us (experiments continue to this day). I then explain just how close this study came to being shut down for political reasons during its very first year.
Belyaev wanted to know what caused the drastic physical change between wolves and dogs, so he made a plan to see by first hand what our ancestors did by domesticating foxes, he chose 32 foxes that didn't fear the human and were naturally docile, he started breeding them and chosing only the docile puppies of those foxes, after 90 generations of selective breeding the foxes started being born with different color of fur, different color of eyes and even different facial features, the behavioral changes in the foxes ended up changing their appearance without any other type of intervention.
Now, what if every animal in this world suffers of the same changes if they are put under the same selective breeding?
So either, we become submissive floppy-eared pets or we are basically feral.
Oliver Rivera
I thought there was gonna be more
Joseph Cox
What's rewarded in current multicultural society? IQ, agreeableness, looks, minority status. What's discouraged? Speaking out of turn, conscientiousness (income taxes), cultural loyalty, white skin. This isn't going to end well. Btw, I want a cute fox.
Camden Kelly
Blacks are feral, whites and specially pure whites are very docile and easy to manipulate.
Parker Sullivan
The selective breeding was not about choosing physical features, it was choosing perfect behaviors, no matter if dark skin is promoted, if intelligent and with good behavior people are promoted the physical changes will appear.
Oliver Ramirez
In a way. I kinda respect the feral beast more than I do the docile pet.
Josiah Hughes
Those foxes were bred for being docile around humans, which is very different than an animal bred to be a pet. They actually make terrible pets and shouldn't be considered domesticated the way most pets are.
What did he feed them? My understanding was Wolves turned to dogs when they started introducing weird shit into their diet, like bread scraps.
Jeremiah Turner
Still, their behavior got changed and their physical appearance changed with them, this experiment is very regulated by external governments and organizations because of what it significates so it is normal that they will try to overthrow it.
Jack Turner
Just natural selection.
Jason Scott
I can dream, can't I?
Robert Morales
They behave like cats more than dogs,they are totally docile.
Ayden Morales
it's pretty unsurprising that their appearance was inadvertently effected given the small initial population and they weren't being bred for appearance
Thomas Lopez
Fuck off virgin larping as a evolutionary geneticist.
I don't disagree with that, it just needs to be pointed out that they're not pets despite being domesticated, which is contrary to the impression that some people will get. There are dozens of specific traits that make a good pet, and these foxes don't have most of them. They're between the animals raised in captivity and the more intelligent house hold pets with long histories of domestication.
Luis Thomas
The original foxes were silver foxes, they had black fur with silver points, their eyes were brown and they had their fangs a little bit more up, also, the ears of the Belyaev fox move in different directions just like dogs, a thing silver foxes can't do, and yes, like you say they were not looking for physical changes, they only wanted to change their behavior.
Blake Cook
You captured my interest and promptly lost it OP. What do you mean the study was almost shut down for political reasons? Go into more detail what this guy did.
Jackson Gutierrez
it proves Physiognomy
John Bell
there are already hypothesis-es that humanity did the same taming to itself and whites and asians are the most docile. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny_in_humans
Henry Bailey
Is that new to you? You can buy domesticated foxes since decades. They are something between cats and dogs in behaviour.
Xavier Murphy
Sorry anons, I wanted to be direct and don't lose the space in the paragraph so I couldn't write the conclusion, you can look for it here evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com
Cameron Roberts
kill off all the brave able men in wars, new breed easier to rule
Evan Adams
>If we select the best of the best we will certainly get the white race 30,000 years later, yeah
Is the selection for appearance accidental? You have people performing the selection, down in the tail end of which animals get selected was there accidental human non-random selection? After enough generations that would show up. The experiment is still cool as fuck.
