Do you think Foxes will become fully domesticated?

Ardillaun wrote: »

Urban foxes may gradually acquire traits that make them more domesticable but it will take a long time. Wolf pups resemble dogs until about 3-6 months, although there are differences much earlier

I'd bet you'd find nearly as much variability among dog breeds, but the real problems and the real differences between wolf and dog come out with maturity. Very strong seasonal physical and behavioural changes for a start, extreme food aggression and resource guarding and extremely high prey drive. Plus wolves grow up. Dogs stay in a delayed puppyhood. An adult wolf wants to strike out on their own, to start a family of their own.

Cesar Milan had an episode where he attempted to train wolf-dog hybrids and he had to adopt a whole different set of strategies to do so.

True, though in fairness Milan still buys into the "dominance" theory BS. Pulling that stuff with a high content wolfdog hybrid with a tendency towards aggression rather than avoidance would be fun to watch.

What is interesting in research on human habituated wolves is the fact they will respond to humans at all. They're as good as, sometimes better than dogs at gaze and finger point following. They can even learn some tasks more quickly. It's not too surprising that they would have fitted into a paleolithic hunter gatherer lifestyle. Early observations of some Native American tribes showed a fair bit of tooing and froing between the humans and wolves. They would follow the humans on their hunting migrations, staying beyond the camps, at arms length but interacting with their dogs and mating with them. Black phase wolves get that colouring from the domestic dog and it's a pretty deep genetic heritage.

conorhal wrote: »

Naa I think it's unlikely.

The animal in question has to be adaptable to domestication in the first place.
We didn't breed independence out of dogs as you suggest, but rather bread beta animals from a pack enviornment to accept humans as the alpha pack animal and thus it accepts it's place in the household.

Nope, not quite. For a start the whole alpha/beta pack stuff has been proven to be wildly inaccurate.

A wolf "pack" is made up of related animals, it's a family basically. An alien might observe an average human family of mum dad and say three kids of different ages and think the kids are "betas" of various levels and the mum and dad are the "alpha breeding couple", but it would be woefully inaccurate. Dogs don't see their owners as the alpha leader, they see them as family members, parents if you will. They even instinctively lick our faces/mouths just as wolf and dog pups do to make their parents regurgitate food. Something they don't tend to do with other adult dogs. Wolf and human families are actually more of a fit for each other than say the great apes and humans.

Cats though not obviously a "pack animal" also see us in the parent role. Though cats do form loose associations. They're more social with each other than usually imagined.

Domestic dogs are even less "pack" orientated than wolves. When dogs go feral they don't form tight familial groups. They form loose associations of differing sizes depending on circumstance with an ebb and flow of members. Male feral dogs unlike male wolves take little or no interest in any pups they beget as another example. So applying pack behaviour theory to our dogs is very wrong footed. They're adaptable social animals focused on us so appear to buy into what their owners believe, but the reality is very different.