Sunday, October 22, 2017

Sly

Foxes have been domesticated at least once, in an experiment with interesting results. Some of their special vulpine traits fade in later generations, though. They seem to thrive as wild animals. A cute sort of wild, obviously, but still.


Fox Kits Playing from Dale Bohlke on Vimeo.

2 comments:

susan said...

The video was very sweet and the article you linked to was extremely interesting. I liked the guy's conclusion that we've pretty much domesticated ourselves (albeit, some of us need more practice).

The coolest thing in a similar vein I've seen recently was a picture of a lady giving a coyote a bath. The story told was that the mother of the guy who posted the picture thought it was a very dirty stray dog.

Truth be told, I don't believe much of what I see posted on the internet but it was an amusing story. The coyote didn't look happy at all.

Ben said...

Yeah, self-domestication is an intriguing idea. Especially as it's something that we may have done, as well as dogs and maybe cats. It could be that there are other animals that thought about it and went "Nah."

The coyote story looks to have been debunked somewhat, so it's a good policy not to believe much of what you come across. (I know many who have yet to learn this.) There is a story behind the coyote not looking too happy though. You could mistake one for a dog, but I don't most would play along.