Mindy Weisberger: Move over, Rover! About 1,500 years ago in Patagonia, a hunter-gatherer's animal bestie was a fox that was about the size of a German Shepherd. Archaeologists found the extinct canid's skeleton in a human grave; analysis of the bones showed it ate the same food as humans & was likely kept as a pet 🧪

Move over, Rover! About 1,500 years ago in Patagonia, a hunter-gatherer's animal bestie was a fox that was about the size of a German Shepherd. Archaeologists found the extinct canid's skeleton in a human grave; analysis of the bones showed it ate the same food as humans & was likely kept as a pet 🧪

Foxes were once humans’ best friends, study says | CNNwww.cnn.com Evidence from a Patagonian burial dating back about 1,500 years hints at a close connection between a hunter-gatherer and the extinct fox species Dusicyon avus.

"Mark, that's not a dog-" "YOU DON'T KNOW THAT YET!"

Its name was Geoff

No wonder the Russian experiment worked. (10/10, would pet)

I wonder if we’re thinking of the same experiment.

Presumably the one about selectively breeding silver foxes to domesticate them over time, and not the sleep experiment.

If so—as I recall—the context for “domesticate“ was more like industrialize: make notoriously fractious foxes docile enough to raise them for fur. The scheme was a commercial failure when over the course of a few short (2-year?) generations the foxes became physically doglike, including their fur.

Apparently my recall is faulty. While there was a fur-breeding background to the story, the pure science elements continued for decades. And wouldn’t you know, the science was politicized.

The silver fox domestication experiment - Evolution: Education and Outreachevolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com For the last 59 years a team of Russian geneticists led by Lyudmila Trut have been running one of the most important biology experiments of the 20th, and now 21st, century. The experiment was the brai...

Same size as a German Shepherd, but only 35ish pounds is a leggy medium sized fellow

Sounds like a tall husky.

That's pretty large for a fox, isn't it?

It is! Shame they're extinct, they sound huggable

Bring him back! 😭

📌

CC @courts112.bsky.social

I love this! ❤️

I feel like this is something @tkingfisher.bsky.social would love.

"Foxes were once humans" best friend's study says

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