Experimental Domestication Of Foxes Yields Clues To Cognitive Evolution

In the new work a team of researchers, led by Brian Hare of the Max Planck Institute, Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues at Harvard University and the Russian Academy of Science, have examined the effect of domestication on the social intelligence of foxes in order to address this question of how social problem solving evolves. Recently, it was found that during domestication dogs evolved an unusual ability to communicate with humans: dogs appear to be more skilled at reading human social cues than wolves and even non-human primates. However, it has remained unclear whether the evolution accompanying domestication in dogs occurred as a result of direct selection for communicative ability or instead as a correlated by-product of breeding selection against fear and aggression toward humans.

To better understand how dogs evolved their unusual social cognitive ability, the researchers studied an experimental population of foxes that have been bred in Siberia, Russia, over the last 45 years to exhibit, over generations, increasingly friendly behavior toward humans. After dozens of generations, these foxes now behave toward people much as pet dogs do--they even bark and wag their tails at the sight of a human. Critically, these foxes were not specifically selected during breeding for their social intelligence. However, the current study found that although the foxes were not intentionally selected to be more skillful at solving social problems, they are in fact just as skillful as domestic dogs at reading human social cues. The current study therefore suggests that social intelligence can increase simply as a result of an animal becoming less fearful and aggressive towards potential social partners.

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Brian Hare, Irene Plyusnina, Natalie Ignacio, Olesya Schepina, Anna Stepika, Richard Wrangham, and Lyudmila Trut: "Social Cognitive Evolution in Captive Foxes Is a Correlated By-Product of Experimental Domestication"

The members of the research team include Brian Hare of Harvard University and the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Irene Plyusnina, Olesya Schepina, Anna Stepika, and Lyudmila Trut of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics at the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Science; and Natalie Ignacio and Richard Wrangham of Harvard University. This research was supported by funds from the Explorers Club, Sigma Xi, the Harvard Anthropology Department, the Harvard Committee for Undergraduate Research, a grant from the Russian Scientific School (number 2303.2004.4), and the Russian Academy of Science Program for "dynamics of gene pools of plants, animals, and humans."

Publishing in Current Biology, Volume 15, Number 3, February 8, 2005, pages 226–230. http://www.current-biology.com