The Fox Experiment That Changed Everything
In 1959, Soviet geneticist Dmitry Belyaev began selectively breeding silver foxes in Siberia for one trait alone: tolerance of humans. Within ten generations, something unexpected happened. The foxes didn't just become calmer. They developed floppy ears, curled tails, piebald colouring, and shorter snouts. Nobody bred for any of those features. They arrived as passengers on the single trait Belyaev had selected. By the time the experiment reached its fourth decade, the foxes were whimpering for human attention and wagging their tails, behaviours that had never existed in the wild population. Belyaev's foxes became the clearest proof that domestication is not a collection of separate changes. It is one change that pulls everything else along with it.
