Tamed fox shows domestication's effects on the brain

[The Straight Story]

Tamed fox shows domestication's effects on the brain
Gene activity changes accompany doglike behavior

COLD SPRING HARBOR, N.Y. – Taming foxes changes not only the animals’ behavior but also their brain chemistry, a new study shows.

The finding could shed light on how the foxes’ genetic cousins, wolves, morphed into man’s best friend. Lenore Pipes of Cornell University presented the results May 10 at the Biology of Genomes conference.

The foxes she worked with come from a long line started in 1959 when a Russian scientist named Dmitry Belyaev attempted to recreate dog domestication, but using foxes instead of wolves. He bred silver foxes (Vulpes vulpes), which are actually a type of red fox with white-tipped black fur. Belyaev and his colleagues selected the least aggressive animals they could find at local fox farms and bred them. Each generation, the scientists picked the tamest animals to mate, creating ever friendlier foxes. Now, more than 50 years later, the foxes act like dogs, wagging their tails, jumping with excitement and leaping into the arms of caregivers for caresses.

At the same time, the scientists also bred the most aggressive foxes on the farms. The descendents of those foxes crouch, flatten their ears, growl, bare their teeth and lunge at people who approach their cages.

The foxes’ tame and aggressive behaviors are rooted in genetics, but scientists have not found DNA changes that account for the differences. Rather than search for changes in genes themselves, Pipes and her colleagues took an indirect approach, looking for differences in the activity of genes in the foxes’ brains.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/350422/description/Tamed_fox_shows_domestications_effects_on_the_brain

[jberryhill]

1. Tamed Fox Shows?

Heck, all of those Fox shows will rot your brain.

[Marie Marie]

2. Those three look rabid to me.

Always foaming at the mouth about something. Now back to the real story. Tame foxes would be very cool. They are so beautiful.

[libodem]

4. If I remember

From hearing this story on NPR the more they tamed them the less their ears stood up and they did a lot of submission wetting behaviors. Changed them, right.

[jberryhill]

13. I can't believe so many DUers keep up with fox news

[libodem]

14. lolol

Pretty funny, there.

[HiPointDem]

3. they bred for tameness and aggression but there's no change in the genes? i don't quite

believe that.

[Duer 157099]

5. It says they didn't find the genes

that's different than saying there's no change in the genes.

Plus, epigenetics is all about varying expression of genes, so even if the gene is the same in two individuals, there are other factors that can cause higher or lower expression of those genes, or coexpression of other genes that have influence, etc.

[HiPointDem]

6. there's a genetic difference between a wolf and a dog. i'm gonna go out on a limb & assume

there's also a difference in a wild fox (not tameable) & a fox that will cuddle on your lap after generations of special breeding.

when you breed for aggression, you're breeding for a trait (& the genetic information underlying them). you're selecting genetic information.

epigenetics is about how the *environment* affects traits & the genetic information underlying them, it's not about breeding for traits.

[Duer 157099]

8. I agree that there probably is

however, just because they couldn't find it doesn't mean one does not exist.

[HiPointDem]

9. yes, which is why the point of this article eludes me. ok, yeah, there are differences in the

brain/chemical activity of these foxes they've been selectively breeding since 1959. who thought there wouldn't be?

selective breeding = selecting for certain traits and eliminating others, the mirror of changes going on at the dna/biochemical level.

what's the big news here?

[RainDog]

10. they selected by phenotype, not genotype

the expression of genes, rather than genes themselves, were the focus of the study because, really, there is no one single gene that explains most any behavior. Genes live in communities, just as humans do, and their expressions are influenced by their communities.

what the study indicates, it seems to me, is that, amazingly, in only 50 years, a major behavioral change was bred, in two different directions.

Within one lifetime, iow, domestication of a species may have been accomplished by an observant group or groups of humans.

This might also be considered a behavioral sort of "founder effect" - a small population breeds among itself and particular traits arise from that small population. These foxes could still interbreed, but the basis of the founder effect as an issue in biology is a change in gene expression because of a small population that, eventually, is geographically isolated, etc. and, even more eventually, creates a new species.

[HiPointDem]

11. i said *traits,* what is it you think you're schooling me on?

"A phenotypic trait is an obvious and observable trait; it is the expression of genes in an observable way."

and in fact, the researchers *did* find genetic difference, so now the point of the article is even more mystifying.

from the article:

In a different sort of analysis, Pipes discovered that all aggressive foxes carry one form of the GRM3 glutamate receptor gene, while a majority of the friendly foxes have a different variant of the gene.

[RainDog]

12. I don't think I'm schooling you on anything

I was talking about what was interesting about the study.

thanks for your reasoned response.

have a great evening!

[HiPointDem]

15. if so, your phrasing made it sound like you were rebutting something, to wit:

"they selected by phenotype, not genotype."

that phrasing is typically used to contradict, negate, or clarify some prior claim.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. We keep telling ourselves that this s why

We should have bred Tuky with a friendly tiel. He was almost like a dog, that cockatiel was.

By the time we read this, he was too old.

But seriously he was the friendliest parrot you would ever meet.