Nah, they replace cats. Classic verminators.
I dunno. There's often an economics to these things. I think that once cats are domesticated, there's no need for domesticated foxes. Cats occupy the territory first, which tends to block parallel domestications.
Some early Christian figure in Egypt lashes out wildly against cats (which were worshiped[1]) in Egypt. Then some community of monks starts domesticating foxes (why? that's the problem - maybe their patron saint was a hypothetical St.Vulpius...)...I agree mostly, but there are an awful lot of crazy cultural/religious things that blocked the economics of a situation. Maybe cats get associated more strongly with something evil.
Two such examples might be a huge backlash against an oppressive hegemonic society that revered cats (a much, much greater Egypt?) or religious significance, where cats are associated with something evil, like greed, sociopathy, or death. This would leave the playing field open for domesticated foxes to fill in the cat niche.
AFAIK, all nations in America had dogs. Or at least I can't think of any that didn't.The best chance would be in the America's. Have one of the agricultural groups in Mexico, Southwest, or Southeast domesticate them to deal with rodents. I think the Southeast would be best, since Mexico had small hairless dogs for hunting rabbits, they could probably be used to hunt mice as well.
The Southeast had larger dogs, and more access to foxes, unlike the Southwest, so there could domesticated foxes along the Mississippi.
I did mention that fact. Thats why I don't think Mesoamerica would do it, since they already had small dog breeds.AFAIK, all nations in America had dogs. Or at least I can't think of any that didn't.
Domesticating foxes is HARD - look at the historical evidence. The Russians had to keep them in cages for ?25? generations before they got something domesticated/domesticable.
No idea.did the native Americans need the equivalent of a cat? Were the native mice a danger to food stores?
I think the only thing that we can say about this idea is that it would be amazing because foxes are cute. But seriously, there have been studies that show that the animals we have domesticated are basically all we CAN domesticate. I could probably find it, but I'm lazy.![]()
But the Russians have domesticated them?
Well foxes are less deadly than wolves so perhaps humans could domesticate them more easily. My guess is that they would replace the usage of domesticated wolves (dogs), although it would be interesting to see them coexist with dogs.
I'd say they have the potential to be good pets, definitely not bad ones. Btw it only took nine generations.By 1964 the fourth generation was already beginning to live up to the researchers' hopes. Trut can still remember the moment when she first saw a fox wag its tail at her approach. Before long, the most tame among them were so doglike that they would leap into researchers' arms and lick their faces. At times the extent of the animals' tameness surprised even the researchers. Once, in the 1970s, a worker took one of the foxes home temporarily as a pet. When Trut visited him, she found the owner taking his fox for walks, unleashed, "just like a dog. I said 'Don't do that, we'll lose it, and it belongs to the institute!'" she recalls. "He said 'just wait,' then he whistled and said, 'Coca!' It came right back."