Dogs began to turn into man's best friends about 20 thousand years ago, when they smelled the delicious smell emanating from fires. Gradually, our distant ancestors began to allow them to remain near them so that they would protect them from predators. Time passed, and gradually people learned to breed new breeds of dogs capable of performing strictly defined tasks. For example, today there are breeds for use during hunting, or calm dogs for moral support. Recently, scientists studied an ancient grave and came to the conclusion that thousands of years ago people could even keep foxes as pets. At first this seemed unlikely, but the authors of the scientific work have convincing evidence.
Archaeological finds hint that people tried to domesticate wild foxes
An extinct species of ancient foxes
The fact that in ancient times people could use foxes as pets, the authors of a scientific publication said IFL Science. Scientists came to this conclusion after they found and studied a 1.5 thousand-year-old grave in South America in 1991. Archaeologists have found 24 skeletons of hunter-gatherers in Argentine Patagonia, but one find has caught their attention the most.
Fox bones found in a human grave. Source: Royal Society Open Science
The skeletal bones of an ancient human have been mixed with the remains of a canid animal. At first, the researchers assumed that they were dealing with the bones of a gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) – this species still exists.
Gray fox. Source: wikipedia.org
However, after recent DNA scanning, it became clear that the bones belong to a representative of the now extinct fox species Dusicyon avus. They lived in large numbers in South America about 500 thousand years ago, but for an unknown reason they became extinct.
An artist's impression of the extinct fox Dusicyon avus. Source: artstation.com, author Juandertal
Read also:Is a dog a man’s best friend, or is he just pretending?
Is it possible to domesticate foxes
For a long time, scientists could not understand why a man and a wild animal were buried together. Based on the fact that the bones were mixed, it could be assumed that the predator got into the grave by accident. But, as it turned out, everything is much more complicated than it seemed at first.
Scientists studied the bones of the animal and found that its diet consisted of a large amount of vegetation, and it rarely consumed meat. This means that the ancient fox was highly dependent on people, that is, it was domesticated. If there was a wild individual lying in the grave, the bones would show that it ate a large amount of meat – predatory animals would never willingly switch to plant foods.
As a pet, the fox ate plant foods
The fact that the animal was buried next to a person indicates their closeness. It is possible that ancient fox species were capable of expressing gratitude and being loyal to their owners. In 1959, Soviet geneticist Dmitry Belyaev managed to breed a breed of friendly foxes, and today these red creatures, whose behavior is similar to ordinary dogs, are sold to private individuals from other countries. But in Russia, keeping foxes as pets is prohibited by law.
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Because Why did ancient animals become extinct?Scientists do not know exactly why the ancient foxes Dusicyon avus became extinct. One version says that the species disappeared as a result of crossing with dogs, but some scientists do not believe in this assumption. A more plausible version is that foxes became extinct as a result of climate change and human intervention. That is, they could have disappeared due to prolonged hunger, the surrounding cold, or they were simply exterminated by hunters. We are unlikely to ever know the exact answer to this question.
Most likely, ancient fox species became extinct due to several reasons
From this article you learned that once upon a time foxes could have been pets, at least in South America. This new knowledge can be safely added to the treasury of your erudition. And if you want to know something else interesting, right now read our article “Foxes are not as red as we imagine them to be.” In it, we briefly figured out why the fur of these animals is colored red, and why in reality it is not as bright as in the photographs.
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Over thousands of years, people have managed to domesticate a huge number of animals. Today we largely need them not for hunting and protection, but simply because we like to look after them. And chickens, sheep and other animals provide us with a rich source of food. If you want to find out how people were able to domesticate chickens to produce eggs and meat, read the article by my colleague Andrei Zhukov “Scientists have figured out how and when they domesticated poultry.”