this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2024
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Funny

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

A few weeks ago, i read about people selectively breeding foxes, panthers and cheetas to make them tameable. So much to apex predators.

Trivia: those friendly foxes got a curly tail.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Ah yeah the Siberian fox experiment is interesting. They found that the tamer foxes had a tendency towards neoteny, ie. basically retaining juvenile features and slower development, and they even lost some of their intelligence too which was interesting. The same has happened with dogs, physically they're closer to juvenile wolves and generally they're also less intelligent than wolves.

Didn't know someone had tried the same with panthers and cheetahs though, that's pretty surprising. Sounds like a bit of a project to tame panthers of all creatures when even housecats aren't as domesticated as eg. dogs

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Pretty sure googling that with the panthers was how i got to the siberian fox experiment. Though i have no links, sorry.