How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) by Lee Alan Dugatkin

How to Tame a Fox offers an incredible tale of scientists at work, while also celebrating the deep attachments that have brought humans and animals together throughout time. To date, fifty-six generations of foxes have been domesticated, and we continue to learn significant lessons from them about the genetic and behavioral evolution of domesticated animals. In How to Tame a Fox, Dugatkin and Trut take us inside this path-breaking experiment in the midst of the brutal winters of Siberia to reveal how scientific history is made and continues to be made today. Trut has been there the whole time, and has been the lead scientist on this work since Belyaev's death in 1985, and with Lee Dugatkin, biologist and science writer, she tells the story of the adventure, science, politics, and love behind it all. The foxes were bred using selection criteria for tameness, and with each generation, they became increasingly interested in human companionship. Along with these physical changes came genetic and behavioral changes, as well.

Most accounts of the natural evolution of wolves place it over a span of about 15,000 years, but within a decade, Belyaev and Trut's fox breeding experiments had resulted in puppy-like foxes with floppy ears, piebald spots, and curly tails. This is the extraordinary, untold story of this remarkable undertaking. He is a behavioral ecologist and historian of science and his main area of research interest is the evolution of social behavior. In 1959, biologists Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut set out to do just that, by starting with a few dozen silver foxes from fox farms in the USSR and attempting to recreate the evolution of wolves into dogs in real time in order to witness the process of domestication. Lee Alan Dugatkin is a Professor of Biology and Distinguished Arts and Sciences Scholar in the Department of Biology at the University of Louisville. They are the result of the most astonishing experiment in breeding ever undertaken-imagine speeding up thousands of years of evolution into a few decades. But, despite appearances, these are not dogs-they are foxes. 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.

How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) by Lee Alan Dugatkin