Thanks to Russian scientists, a new breed of fox is available and it’s too damn cute!
Dogs and cats have lived among us for thousands of years, but if you want something a little more unique and of course if you’re willing to pay, say about $9,000, a pet fox is exactly what you need.
Domestication started just 55 years ago, but because Russian geneticists methodically bred just the friendliest foxes, a handful of charming, domesticated and trainable foxes are available today.
Foxes are carnivore and wild, but this new breed is one of the rarest domesticated animals in the world, with only hundred or so currently existing. All of them are bred from animals in Russia.
The whole project to domesticate foxes started in 1959 on a scientific outpost near Kazakhstan where geneticist Dmitry Belyaev wanted to see how quickly humans could tame a species by breeding on behavior alone. In what became one of the most famous biological experiments of the 20th century, Belyaev showed the world showed that domestication—and by extension, evolution—could work faster than anyone imagined.
Belyaev started with a population of fur farm foxes and chose the friendliest 10%—the 130 animals that were rated the least likely to attack or run from people. Within four generations, some foxes were wagging tails. By generation six, 1.8% were deemed the “elite of domestication”; they eagerly sought human friends. By generation 10, it was 18% and by 20 it was double that. Curiously, the friendly gene came attached to some other physical genes that made the foxes look like other domestic animals: curly tails, white faces, droopy ears. It took only about 35 years to completely domesticate the species.
Mitch Kalmanson, a Florida exotic pet owner and insurance agent with all the right, obscure licenses, has exported 10 foxes, keeping three for himself. He’s the only one selling them in the U.S. and has also exported them to Europe.
He pays the lab $3,200 for each fox. Shipping the fox in a custom-designed crate is $1,700. He also pays for all the vaccines and neutering (so you don’t run your own domestic fox experiments at home). The foxes arriving now in the United States are even more pet-like than those just a few years ago, Kalmanson says.
Kalmanson asked that the ones destined to be pets be given longer interactions with people. He supplied harnesses for long walks. Some Russian graduate students have adopted them as pets. Now when the foxes arrive here, they are treated much like a dog, even going on trips to stores.
According to Kalmanson, these foxes are completely different than the ones that are sold around the United States by backyard breeders for $400 to $600.
But the question is, even if you can buy a domesticated fox, should you?
The post Meet Your New Pet, A Domesticated Fox. appeared first on The Bored Mind.
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