- Fox number one.
So, that is me, locked
in a pen in San Diego.
And that is a very special
red fox from Russia.
We're testing whether the fox likes me,
because it's actually bred to
be friendly towards people.
And, in that moment, I'm really
hoping it passes the test.
I'm just minding my own business.
Exotic pets are weirdly compelling,
especially on social media.
They're like a glimpse
into this alternate reality
where we domesticated raccoons
instead of cats and dogs.
But, they're not really domesticated.
Animals like cats, dogs, horses, pigs,
we bred them for
generation after generation
to live alongside humans.
Exotic pets are hand raised,
but they're basically still wild animals
with maybe one exception.
(soft music)
We drove up into the
hills outside San Diego
to meet a very few rare animals.
They're foxes that are born without
any built-in fear or
aggression towards humans.
They wag their tails at
you; they like treats.
They're very curious about you,
though they are a little camera shy.
There's nothing quite like them.
Aww, I got a lick, I got a lick.
We're visiting Amy and David Bassett
at their Canid Education
and Conservation Center.
It's sort of an interactive zoo
built to introduce the
general public to foxes.
The Bassetts got them as pets,
but not from an exotic pet breeder.
They're the result of a nearly
60-year long Russian science experiment.
Victor, sit, sit, good fox, good fox.
It all traces back to a Soviet geneticist
named (speaks foreign language)
In the 1950s, (speaks foreign
language) hit on an idea
that was radical for its time,
that domesticated animals like dogs
are friendly to people because of genes
that govern their behavior.
Meaning, the process that
turned wolves into dogs
tens of thousands of years
ago was essentially evolution.
There were friendliness
genes that won out in wolves
as they adapted to live alongside humans.
These foxes exist because of the way
(speaks foreign language) tested his idea.
In 1959, his team began
selectively breeding foxes
at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics
in remote (speaks
foreign language) Russia.
The criterion was simple.
The foxes that showed the
least fear or aggression
when approached by experimenters
were allowed to breed.
The less friendly foxes weren't.
They selected the next
generation of foxes the same way,
and the next generation,
and the next, for decades.
(speaks foreign language) died in 1985,
but the work continued and by 2004
nearly 70% of the foxes had reached
an elite level of friendliness.
By some measures, they
had domesticated the fox,
which is how a few years back
two dog lovers found
themselves in over their heads.
- We had absolutely no idea.
They're very cheeky, very
mischievous, get into everything,
chew and tear everything apart.
- [Host] David and Amy currently own five
of the only 10 or 15
(speaks foreign language)
foxes in the United States.
They cost around $9,000
to buy and import one
all the way from Siberia
and they came with a learning curve.
- We learned quickly that they
are not really house trained.
So, they will poop and pee everywhere.
So, it's not very easy to have them
in your kitchen, say, when they
jump on the counters and poop.
- [Host] The Bassetts have since
adjusted to life with foxes,
but they've learned that being
domesticated is one thing,
being man's best friend is another.
- While they are certainly tame,
they're fascinating
and incredible animals,
they're still foxes and
when you domesticate a fox,
you don't make a dog, you
make a domesticated fox.
Anymore than when you domesticate
a horse you make a dog.
- [Host] So, (speaks
foreign language) did not
recreate the dog, but for anyone studying
how wolves evolved into dogs,
the foxes might still represent
a behavioral stepping stone.
- [Host] Clive Wynne is
professor of psychology
at Arizona State.
He studies the unique relationship
between dogs and people
and the way that dogs go above and beyond
simple friendliness towards humans.
- [Host] Accord to Clive,
at least 14,000 years ago
hyper-social dogs emerged from
a population of wild wolves
and no one's really sure how it happened.
- [Host] But, the (speaks
foreign language) foxes
might offer a clue.
Clive and his team have a simple test
to see how far along the foxes are
on their path to doghood.
And they told us how to carry it out.
So, the experiment is really simple.
I have a one-meter radius circle
all the way around me
and they're gonna bring
in a fox one at a time
into this enclosure.
The idea was to see
how much of two minutes
the foxes would spend inside my circle.
We tried first with the three
(speaks foreign language) foxes
and one-by-one they
trotted up, sniffed me,
and then relaxed somewhere else,
which has been Clive's
experience with the foxes, too.
- [Host] For comparison,
we also tested a fox
that was hand-reared by
humans, but genetically wild.
It never set foot inside the radius
and it never relaxed.
And, for a final
contrast, we tested a dog.
I gotta ignore you for two minutes.
Afterwards, we got to spend some more time
with the (speaks foreign language) foxes
and they were completely tame with us,
just not so friendly.
Clive and the Bassetts suspect
that this is because of their
early lives as lab animals.
They were bred for
generations to be friendly,
but then barely socialized as youngsters,
and that's important, too.
- [Host] Clive and his team
plan to keep studying fox
behavior to build out a roadmap
for how dogs became dogs.
But, locked inside each of
those foxes is another roadmap,
one that might help explain
domestication in any animal.
- [Host] Anna Kukekova is a
professor or animal sciences
at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Since 2002, she's been collaborating
with the institute in
Russia on genetics research.
Her goal is to reach the absolute core
of the fox experiment,
the specific genes involved
in fox domestication.
And a few weeks ago, she and
her team published a paper
in Nature, Ecology, and Evolution
that made a lot of progress.
- [Host] Anna's research is valuable,
because it directly compares the genes
of wild and domesticated foxes.
We can do that with wolves and dogs,
but we can't infer as much about it.
As dogs evolved, friendliness just wasn't
the only trait that mattered.
For example, they also
had to digest human food.
So, we can see which genes
changed from wolves to dogs,
but it's harder to know whether
those really are behavior genes.
On the other hand, there
was only one fox trait
that (speaks foreign
language) selected for,
friendliness towards humans.
So, here it's a little easier to
associate behavior with DNA.
- [Host] This is such a big deal,
because there's a lot of
overlap in mammalian genes.
So, these genes that Anna found,
they could help us
understand domestication
across the board.
And, given that, it's
possible that we could use
gene editing tools to domesticate
entirely new animals in the lab, maybe.
- [Host] But, back in reality,
where does that leave the foxes?
They're still being
bred for the experiment,
but they're also trickling
out into the world as pets,
which puts them in a strange no-man's land
between a wild animal and a companion.
They were not created
the same way dogs were
and they're certainly not dogs now.
But, if you know to look for it,
there's a hint of something
familiar about them.
- You take the short
moments when they're scared
they'll come to you.
If you're open to it and
you realize what that means.
What's the significance
of this semi-wild animal
who just came to you for comfort
and that's kind of what
you have to understand
in order to bond with a fox.
It's these small moments that have
huge significance to them.
(soft music)
- So, one thing we didn't
talk about was that
even though (speaks foreign
language) only selected
for friendliness, there were a lot of
physical changes to the foxes, too.
Their coats were different,
their ears got floppier,
even their skulls changed.
It's called domestication syndrome
and you should read about
it, because it is wild.
