How to tame a fox
by Lee Alan Dugatkin · first published 2017
3mentions
2recommended by
2HN commenters
2025–2026first – last mentioned
100% recommend
"Tucked away in Siberia, there are furry, four-legged creatures with wagging tails and floppy ears that are as docile and friendly as any lapdog. But, despite appearances, these are not dogs-they are foxes. They are the result of the most astonishing experiment in breeding ever undertaken-imagine speeding up thousands of years of evolution into a few decades. In 1959, biologists Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut set out to do just that, by starting with a few dozen silver foxes from fox farms in the USSR and attempting to recreate the evolution of wolves into dogs in real time in order to witne
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There is a fascinating story documented in "How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution" by by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut (https://www.amazon.com/How-Tame-Fox-Build-Dog/dp/022644418X) about a long-running domestication…
on “Stone selection by wild chimpanzees shares patterns with Oldowan hominins” ↗My top reads this year: - How to Tame a Fox - great popsci history of a genetics experiment - "The Sixth Extinction" and "Not the end of the world" - compelling but contrasting takes on climate change - Through Two Doors at Once - posci history…
on “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?” ↗Highly recommend the book "How to tame a fox" about the Russian fur farm fox domestication experiment
on “Wolves Became Dogs” ↗