Fox domestication

samcster94

Banned
Is there a way to make anyone try to tame foxes for a niche similar to cats or dogs if it is possible??? The Russian experiment obviously is interesting but could it happen naturally??
 

Marc

Donor
Single animals of all are often tamable, witness pet polecats (skunks). But as a domesticated species? Not without a very long historical period of genetic selection; and more pertinently why? They seem to have no utility value as a domestic animal.
 
You can domesticate anything if given enough time and patience, but there's no niche a fox could fill that you couldn't do with a dog already.
 
Although under certain circumstances it could happen; the argument rests on “why domesticate a fox when I can breed a dog to be that size and do what it can do”
 
You would have to have it when the fur industry was well and truly a thing and that begins only a couple of hundred years ago
 
Just like there were different kind of cows bred, there could have been different kind of “dogs” bred, right?

And some people could have advocated one type, and some another.
 
If foxes had been selected beginning as far back as the wolves or proto-dogs, sure could have done it. It would take a scenario where you had foxes but not larger canids around for primitive man to begin domesticating. By recorded history you'd then have different fox breeds, just like you had different dog breeds - even before the highly selective breeding that began in the last 2,000 years or so.
 
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