In the dog family, we have managed to fully domesticate only two species: the domestic dog, which is a variant of Canis lupus, and the red fox. The former was domesticated at least 12,000 years ago, but it could have happened as early as 135,00o years before present. The derivatives of this domestication are quite widespread– and quite successful. The other domestication is much more limited in scope. The Belyaev experiment with fur-farmed silver foxes in Siberia produced a strain of domesticated red foxes. These animals are widely studied, but they have remained almost exclusively in Russia. They have now only recently become available as pets in this country.
However, a third species has the potential to be domesticated, and this domestication could become as widespread as the dog.
I’m talking about the fennec fox (Vulpes zerda).
It is native to the deserts of North Africa, where locals have occasionally kept them as pets.
However, in recent years keeping them as pets has become increasingly popular in the West.
They have certain advantages over other fox species that make them a candidate for domestication. They are more social than other foxes. Descriptions of them in the wild suggest a colonial breeding system, in which several pairs live near each other. Adults are known for their unusually playful behavior, which obviously could endear them to virtually any person.
They also lack the musk glands that other foxes possess. Red foxes are notoriously possessed of a rank odor. Fennecs don’t smell all skunky.
However, no intense selective breeding for tameness and docility has yet occurred in captive fennec fox populations.
That means they still have a lot of their wild behaviors. They don’t follow rules as dogs do, and they are nearly impossible to litter box train or housebreak. Of course, you wouldn’t want them running out in the yard without supervision. They would bolt as soon as they could.
But all of these issues do not seem to prevent people from wanting them as pets.
And that inevitably means that breeders of these animals will select for a more docile temperament and more trainability.
Selecting for those traits will have an effect upon the fennec phenotype– just as it has affected the dog and domestic red fox population. Selection for tameness alone in the Belyaev experiment produced foxes with very unique phenotypes. (Some looked a lot like border collies.)
One can only imagine what fennecs will look like with floppy ears and curled tails. I can see them having spots and flattened muzzles.
I can also see them eventually coming in different sizes.
And different coat types.
Which might make different strains.
Which we can only hope will be bred with such care that inbreeding and the popular sire effect don’t destroy them. The current registry system for captive fennecs is trying to ensure genetic diversity within the population.
Maybe in this dog domestication 2.0, we won’t be as stupid.
Maybe we won’t waste the potential of this species as we did with domestic dogs.
Maybe we won’t get bizarre notions about blood purity or attach our own egos to the gene pools in a such a way that we stop caring about things like COI’s.
Maybe.
I just know that the fennec has a long way to go before it becomes a truly domesticated animal.
But I don’t doubt that one day it will be.
This will be our second chance with another dog species.
Let’s just hope we learn from our mistakes with domestic Canis lupus and do what’s right for the fennec.
I hope we learn.
***
I should reiterate that fennec foxes are a long way from reaching this level of domestication, but it seems likely that they will eventually attain this status.
It’s really a matter of time.
Within this species lies the potential for a new companion animal.
I may be attacked for promoting keeping a wild animal as a pet.
I’m not.
It just seems to me almost inevitable that the fennec is going to become a domestic animal.
There are too many of them in captivity, and the demand for them is only going to increase.
People like the idea of keeping wild dogs as pets.
It doesn’t matter that fennecs, as they exist in captivity now, are very much wild animals– with wild instincts and drives.
That’s why it’s probably not a good idea for us to try wolf domestication again.
A hundred pound wolf that is acting out its natural behavior is a dangerous thing.
A three pound fennec, though, is a bit less daunting.
A new domestication event could happen here.
It may even be inevitable.
And with that will come many possibilities.
And responsibilities.
is there any merit to the claim that the fennec fox and the chihuahua share some dna?
None:
https://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/a-crazy-theory-on-chihuhua-origins/
Nice story, though.
Almost plausible.
I should rewrite that post at some point.
That was written just as I was getting started.
It amazes me how much chihuahuas look like the extinct tahltan bear dogs.
I wonder if they bark much? I have seen them at a zoo, they are cute, but usually sleeping.
I wonder if keeping fennec foxes will actually result in a domestic animal. It would only happen if people breed them correctly and with purpose, rather than pump out as many as they can into the exotic pet market. Maybe such a thing won’t happen in the age of email order pets.
Look at parrots for instance. There are a few examples of domesticated parrot species, but most are still wild animals, and they have been bred in captivity for quite awhile now. Are parrots now getting more docile and easily handled with each generation? I’m not really sure, but I doubt it.
That’s because large parrots have long generations and are very hard to breed in captivity.
And yes, we have domesticated parrots– budgies, lovebirds, and cockatiels have all been bred for sound temperaments and colors.
What’s more, fennecs have a game plan: http://www.fennecfoxes.net/
And the other thing is we’re dealing with a dog species here.
All dogs species are very susceptible to selective pressures, more so than normal species are.
It would not take very long to fully domestic fennecs.
It would just have to be done. A bigger gene pool is probably going to be necessary, but I’ve not seen any evidence that the demand for pet foxes has gone away.
Because these animals are being bred exclusively as pets, there is a selective pressure on them right now. It may not even be conscious, but the breeders are choosing which fennecs breeds.
I am unaware if anyone in their registry has decided actually go this route, but I think it’s just a matter of time before they realize they can domesticate this animal.
It will probably take a color mutation or an ear-carriage mutation to get the ball rolling.
One like this one would be an excellent choice for breeding a tame strain:
There would have to be a concerted, large scale effort, and without appropriate culling of animals not meeting the grade they wouldn’t get anywhere. I looked into Fennecs some years ago (maybe ten or so), and I found no breeders that were really selecting parents for temperament (the kits are removed from the parents at two weeks for hand-rearing to bond with people) or keeping enough offspring long enough to evaluate as potential breeders or even if the breeding animals were producing an appropriate temperament.
If they actually gained popularity, (and there were more breeders competing with each other) I think it’s possible.
As it is right now, you’re right, they’re “exotic” and every pup is valuable, so there isn’t going to be much culling. I think RM is right about there being some selection pressure for breeding animals that are easier to handle, easier to take the pups away, things like that.
[…] Domesticating the Fennec: Dog Domestication 2.0? […]
What potential do you feel was lost in dog domestication?
The biggest potential we lost was the destruction of the great genetic diversity in the ancestral Canis lupus species.
The earliest possible dog skull ever found comes from Goyet Cave in Belgium.
That same study that documented this skull found a great genetic diversity in ancient wolf and “dog” MtDNA sequences– so diverse that none of the wolves or “dogs” have the same maternal ancestor as modern wolves or dogs.
It is true that genetic diversity for all sorts of carnivores dropped as the result of environmental changes at the end of Pleistocene. It is also true that domestication events reduce genetic diversity in general. And it is also true that wild wolves have suffered genetic diversity issues since persecution has fragmented and destroyed their populations.
But domestic dogs still have a lot of genetic diversity for a domestic animal.
The problem is that in the past 150 to 200 years, we in the West have done all we can to sequester that genetic diversity into all sorts of contrived bottlenecks– what we call closed registry breeds, which are virtually all the breeds we have.
And that’s the potential we have lost. Dogs and wolves– because of some unique characteristics in their DNA– can easily be bred into unique forms. It doesn’t take a lot of selective breeding to produce something very unique. In the wild, this allowed wolves to easily adapt to new niches. However, the fastest way to produce a strain that produces such a unique phenotype is to closely line-breed or inbreed. Or breed from just a few stud dogs that leave their mark upon the closed registry gene pool.
That is the potential that was lost since dogs were first domesticated. We went a little crazy in trying create so many unique forms that we forgot about the importance of genetic diversity. And that’s one of the reasons why purebred dogs have so many inherited disorders.
We could solve this problem if we had an open registries– real ones, not ones that say they are and then make it nearly impossible to bring in new blood– we could start solving some of these problems.
But the dog culture at large is very resistant to having an open registry system, simply because there is a widely held (almost religious) belief that if you allow new blood in, the dogs in a breed will no longer be of that breed.
Gotcha. Can’t really argue with it either.
From observing the reptile market, and breeding a few myself, I can testify that people won’t learn from the mess the kennels created. Australian imports are a big mess now, even the popular crested geckos are (censored) beyond reason.
In fact, quite a few hobbyists with MSc in Genetics predict that a few species of lizards and snakes will be in worse shape than dogs in fifteen years. The fact that Fennecs are popular indicate people are still being materialistic.
I think the key to restoring genetic diversity is when people start realizing the breed-specific or the flavour-of-the-month species (when it comes to fish and reptiles) they are choosing for the urban lifestyle is simply not working out and are incompatible; then I think people will start breeding for something other than the standards.
I’ve researched a lot on reptiles and fish since posting that.
I’ve noted that this problem also exists in exotics, but there are more than a few people who disagree with it, more so than exist within dogs.
Dogs exist in fairly healthy numbers and have good genetic diversity but are not bred in ways that keep that in mind for cultural reasons.
Most of these exotics have a more finite genetic base, simply because they are only so many reptiles that can be imported at one time.
We’ll see what happens, but because there are no closed registry breeds in any reptiles (that I know of) there may be less cultural resistance to breeding for diversity in those species.
I hope that people will realize diversity is the key. Right now, it is quite ridiculous. However you are right, there is less cultural resistance, but that’s highly dependent on what you are breeding.
Monitor lizards are being sold in trios because they are supposedly next to impossible to sex for your average herpetoculturists, despite zoologists already discovered the key to sexing them. So many of them are siblings breeding with siblings… do the math: introduced into America around 1980s or 1990s, mature within a year and so on. Any illness or infertility is usually blamed on undeveloped husbandry. It is difficult to assess whether or not if an unknown environmental condition is missing, or they are so far inbred it shouldn’t be a surprise.
Some people refuses to cross-out because they are afraid of losing the recessive genes. I don’t blame them for this, it’s akin to trial/show breeders; what they don’t realize is eventually they will lose the line they have guarded for so long. Luckily, there are people who are willing to cross-out and create new lines, but there is a cultural stratification of “the outcrossed line isn’t as good as the original line.”
Others refuse to cross-out because they want to maintain the locality type (rosy boas come to mind), despite the fact the captive specimen will never ever be the same as their wildtype. To show how ludicious this line of thinking is: can we honestly say the leopard geckos, originally descended from university labs, are the same as the ones in Pakistan, Afghanistan and neighbouring areas?
Sorry for bitching, but after I found out what happened to ferrets and when I saw what happened to show German Shepherds for the first time after a life-time of being exposed to guide-dogs and protection-dogs, I raged big-time; not because the breeders are at fault, but because after witnessing a few aquarium species crash, the same thing repeating within herpetoculture with certain animals, then see that it is being accelerated within the dog circle. Yeah.
So, I don’t have a lot of faith for other exotics keepers such as fennecs or civets either.