Tri States Public Radio Staff Sun March 18, 2012 Domesticated
Foxes: Man's New Best Friend? For thousands of years, dogs have
been our companions. After countless generations of selective
breeding, they've become hard-wired to follow human commands:
sit, lie down, jump, even shake. So far, most other animals
don't come close. But what if they could? In 1954 a Russian
geneticist named Dmitry Belyaev wanted to isolate the genes that
make dogs so easy to train. He started a fox farm in Siberia and
set out to do with foxes in one lifetime what took dogs
thousands of years. Belyaev died in 1985, but others carried on
his work; 50,000 foxes later, the project isn't complete, but
it's close. "So close. It's the last step," Ceiridwen Terrill
tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. Terrill is
associate professor of Science Writing and Environmental
Journalism at Concordia University of Portland, Ore. She's also
the author of Part Wild: One Woman's Journey with a Creature
Caught Between the Worlds of Wolv