How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog)

By Lee Alan Dugatkin, Lyudmila Trut,

Book cover of How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution

Book description

Tucked away in Siberia, there are furry, four-legged creatures with wagging tails and floppy ears that are as docile and friendly as any lapdog. But, despite appearances, these are not dogs-they are foxes. They are the result of the most astonishing experiment in breeding ever undertaken-imagine speeding up thousands of…

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Why read it?

1 author picked How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

It took millennia for the wolf to become “man’s best friend.” At least that was accepted scientific wisdom until a brave Russian scientist and World War II hero decided to replicate the domestication process with foxes. Under the disguise of making fox breeding in fur farms easier, he recruited a team of biologists at a location in Siberia, where foxes were selected for breeding based on their tameness in interaction with humans. To the experimenters’ great surprise, it only took a few decades until the foxes became as tame and human-centered as dogs. A great story of scientific curiosity and…

From Peter's list on interspecies communication.

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