On Sat, 3 Jul 1999, Ray Audette wrote:

> Feral dogs are not wolves even after many generations.  They become a paticular type of dog (similar to
> dingoes) but never again become wolves.

Has anyone tried to "backbreed" wolves from dogs?  I remember
reading about such an experiment with cows, many years ago.

> >  Interestingly, the domesticated foxes
> > were different from the others in many characteristics that had
> > nothing to do with their docility.  Most of those characteristics
> > had nothing to do with neoteny either, with the possible
> > exception of their having juvenile-looking faces.
>
> Spots, curled tails, tamness and barking are all characteristics of immature canines.  In the wild these would
> have no positive effect on survival until interaction with man increased these neotinized animals ability to
> take large game.

You are missing the point of the experiment.  Your position has
been that "neoteny" is a common mutation that is caused by sharp
changes in selection pressure,  including dietary changes.  The
tame fox experiment involved no such changes, but only the
selection of the tamer foxes.  Diet remained the same and contact
with humans remained the same: minimal.  The only variable that
was manipulated was mating the tamer animals.

It is news to me that spots, curled tails, and barking are
characteristics of immature *foxes*, but maybe it is so.  The
morphological changes noted by the researchers were piebald
splotches (not spots), narrower heads, curled tails, shorter
tails, shorter legs, *earlier* opening of eyes after birth,
shorter breeding cycle, higher serotonin levels, and a few more
that I'm forgetting.

While some of these might be considered characteristics of
immature foxes, others cannot be.  Docility itself is a
characteristic of the immature animals, but the unanswered
question is why selection pressure for docility alone brings
about so many apparently unrelated morphological changes, not
only in foxes but in other species.

Todd Moody
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