Dogs, Cats and.....Foxes?

As we know there are a lot of different species of domesticated animals out there. Everything ranging from elephants to chickens has been used by Man for one purpose or another but the two closest animals to the Human Race are dogs and cats and while they have important places in Human history as working animals they're one of the few that are equally important as companion animals.

However what if there was a third species added to this group? What if as well as domesticating canines and felines pre-historic man had domesticated vulpines? How would domesticated foxes bred for fur farming and as pets have affected foxes and mankind?

Domestication of Dogs

Domestication of Cats

Russian Domestication of Foxes Research

Domesticated Fox video 1

Domesticated Fox video 2

Domesticated foxes interacting with humans and dogs
 
As we know there are a lot of different species of domesticated animals out there. Everything ranging from elephants to chickens has been used by Man for one purpose or another but the two closest animals to the Human Race are dogs and cats and while they have important places in Human history as working animals they're one of the few that are equally important as companion animals.

However what if there was a third species added to this group? What if as well as domesticating canines and felines pre-historic man had domesticated vulpines? How would domesticated foxes bred for fur farming and as pets have affected foxes and mankind?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR-GHmuumAw&feature=related

Then even more arguing about which pet is best! Fox Food would be made.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
The question are what purpose they will serve, find a unique purpose for them, and people may domesticate them.
 
Well, I mean with approximately 13,000 years of co-existing with foxes, there would have been attempts to domesticate them, which have failed as we can see by this astounding lack of domesticated foxes in the World.
Perhaps in the 1200s, using foxes to hunt is found to be a great pleasure to royalty, who domestic ate them in a manner similar to Fancy rats.
 
The question are what purpose they will serve, find a unique purpose for them, and people may domesticate them.

Indeed.
We appropriated dog's ancestors firstly to help us hunt then secondly for guarding and similar. They are pack animals and socially we took over their alpha leader roles.

Cats on the other hand just seem to have turned up ;) and were tolerated for their ratting and mousing. Their social use seems to have happened with an increase in urban living confining cats to households.

Foxes however have the solitariness of cats without the hunting use of dogs. It would be easier to hunt them for fur rather than domesticate them.

That said let's accept the OP and consider.
Foxes that are bred not to eat the family chickens would then probably oust cats as luxury family pets - though cats tolerated for ratting on farms. Perhaps foxes prove just as useful in that regard?
If not then foxes would be considered an upper class pet with cats lower class.
 
Perhaps domestication would occur in places where wolves were not readily available, but foxes where. Thus, foxes could provide something useful, despite not doing so as well as potentially possible. Of course I'm not sure if such a place existed OTL.
 
Well, I mean with approximately 13,000 years of co-existing with foxes, there would have been attempts to domesticate them, which have failed as we can see by this astounding lack of domesticated foxes in the World.
Perhaps in the 1200s, using foxes to hunt is found to be a great pleasure to royalty, who domestic ate them in a manner similar to Fancy rats.

Uhm. Perhaps I'm reading you wrong, but it strikes me that you've gone and rather missed the content of the OP. Assuming I'm wrong, meat is.... fairly unlikely. Further, domestication is a long process, which is why top-down efforts mostly failed up to the 1950s. It's usually the peasants that get the job done from the bottom up. Fur domestication in the medieval period is more possible, but given the easy access to furs at the time, doubtful. There's just too little impetus for it, economically.

As to the OP? Well, it's not that hard to arrange, in theory. You'll never have foxes fitting into the same slot as dogs. Sheer size will simply be decisive. So dogs still end up the main animal for hunting, protection, war, etc. Tracking may be competitive, but I'd guess the size and speed of dogs would still tend to make them dominant in the field. When and if foxes do take off, though, creatures like the terrier are suddenly obsolete. Why breed down dogs when foxes are already the right size?

In mannerisms and social behavior foxes are much more like cats. I'd expect their main value would be the same as the latter - hunters of vermin - rather than fur. Think in the perspective of early agriculturalists - which is more valuable? An animal that kills rats and mice that stand between famine and plenty, or a fur coat?

Unfortunately, the existence of cats reduces the need for foxes in this role. Why try to tame a fox to do what tame cats manage already?

If we're to get domesticated fox to the same lofty station as dogs and cats, you need to avoid this question. Which means, more or less, that you need to have simultaneous domestication. So get foxes being domesticated in East Asia before the first dynasties. Probably they start out scavenging from trash piles, and things develop from there. Whichever - fox or cat - was domesticated first would tend to relegate the other to niche roles. If it happens at roughly the same time, though, you end up with two regions using two different animals. Eventually the two meet, but being rough equals one will not replace the other. They will cross into each other's territory where niche roles are open, and eventually you have the categories of activities that small dogs and cats perform in OTL, split between foxes and cats.

At first, cats will be the obvious victim of this. Domesticated foxes seem to be friendlier and more social than cats, who early on dominated the "little companion" role. In a setting like our modern world, however, this is very bad for dogs. In OTL large and medium breeds are disappearing with urbanization in favor of apartment-capable forms, and these likely would not exist in a timeline with a domesticated fox. The only small dog strongly likely to still exist in such a world would, horrifyingly, be the chihuahua.
 
I'd imagine there'd be no need to breed small breed dogs, as the service niches they provide would be taken up by the foxes.
 
If we're to get domesticated fox to the same lofty station as dogs and cats, you need to avoid this question. Which means, more or less, that you need to have simultaneous domestication. So get foxes being domesticated in East Asia before the first dynasties. Probably they start out scavenging from trash piles, and things develop from there. Whichever - fox or cat - was domesticated first would tend to relegate the other to niche roles. If it happens at roughly the same time, though, you end up with two regions using two different animals. Eventually the two meet, but being rough equals one will not replace the other. They will cross into each other's territory where niche roles are open, and eventually you have the categories of activities that small dogs and cats perform in OTL, split between foxes and cats.
This is very interesting as there is no apparent reason from reading it why you should get foxes being domesticated in on area and cats in another just as cattle were domesticated in one and horses in another, both to function as draft animals.

One possibility is that foxes sleep underground whilst cats do not. Any animal that voluntarily separates itself from humans part of the day is going to be less domesticable per se. Assuming that we are looking at early villages, cats can sleep in byres, on haystacks or in granaries thus being more obviously attached to humans. This is obviously a trick that foxes never learned.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
I'm sorry what?:confused:
Let there be ninjas! Ninja foxes!

Ninja_Fox_update_by_thiago_almeida.jpg
 
Dogs were domesticated to assist in hunting, cats were domesticated to catch rats and mice. What purpose would the fox have?

weinerblut brought up an interesting idea-- if foxes were domesticated so as to not eat chickens.

this could lead to a cat-like niche except specialized in guarding smaller livestock like chickens and such. they could guard/hunt weasels, rats, or anyother smaller chicken-loving animal with the benefit of being small enough to actually persue the animal, unlike a dog.
 
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