LiegentHow to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution
In Stalin's Soviet Union, a scientist dared to conduct forbidden genetic research that would forever change our understanding of domestication. This short chronicles Dmitri Belyaev's revolutionary experiment to transform aggressive silver foxes into friendly companions through selective breeding for tameness alone. As foxes began wagging tails and seeking human affection within just a few generations, the project revealed how domestication's physical and behavioral changes emerge from a single selection criterion. Despite political persecution, economic collapse, and personal tragedy, the experiment survived to reveal the genetic foundations of domestication. Lee Alan Dugatkin's work not only documents this remarkable scientific journey but offers valuable insights into how wolves became dogs and how humans might have domesticated ourselves.
Lee Alan Dugatkin is an evolutionary biologist and behavioral ecologist who serves as a professor of biology at the University of Louisville. His research focuses on animal behavior and the genetic basis of social evolution across species. Dugatkin's collaboration with Russian scientists on the silver fox domestication experiment has brought crucial scientific work to Western audiences, bridging cultural divides during and after the Cold War.
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