Вот уже долгое время на Западе выходят статьи о сенсационном успехе российских ученых. Речь, однако, не о физиках-ядерщиках, не о конструкторах видов вооружений, и даже не об исследователях космоса, а о первом за долгие века, если не тысячелетия, одомашнивании животного. Теперь о нашем прорыве вышла и целая книга, написанная в тесном сотрудничестве с человеком, курировавшим эксперимент десятелетия.

Итак, нашим специалистам из новосибирского Академгородка удался редкий опыт – число домашних питомцев человека пополнили лисы, в природе людей избегающие. Одомашнивание диких видов процесс небыстрый и не всегда удачный. Существующий круг подлинно одомашненных животных сложился давно, и похоже, наши предки приручили всех, кого возможно было в тех условиях приручить.

Светлая мысль взяться за этих псовых пришла в голову ученого-биолога Дмитрия Беляева еще в 1950-х, однако генетика в те годы была под запретом, поэтому разрешение на начало опытов с чернобурыми лисицами он мотивировал увеличением поголовья источника ценного меха, так как домашние животные размножаются чаще своих диких кузенов. Однако отнюдь не только интересы народного хозяйства двигали Беляевым. Он предположил, что лишь контролируя такой параметр как человекобоязнь, можно через поколения добиться преданных и ласковых зверей, похожих по нраву на собак.

Приветливых лисиц удалось вывести быстрее, чем ожидалось, но вместе с уменьшением агрессивности, у животных стали проявляться и непредвиденные физические изменения, поразившие ученых, – в каждом поколении лисы становились все более похожими на собак: висящие уши, лай, хвост колечком и даже пятнистый окрас!

Увы, в 1990-х, спустя десять лет после смерти Беляева, эксперимент едва не прервался – в стране не было денег на науку. Спасло его письмо ученицы и продолжательницы Беляева Людмилы Трут в авторитетный научный журнал Scientific American, в котором она рассказала о революционных достижениях и опасности, нависшей над работой: была не только нехватка средств на зарплаты персоналу и питание животных, но и шкурки самих лис стали выглядеть притягательными для перепродажи в глазах многих обедневших сограждан. Сейчас ученые со всего мира приезжают в Академгородок работать с уникальными лисицами, а у нас появился лишний повод посетить Новосибирск – если не прикупить себе необычного питомца, то хотя бы полюбоваться на новое и уникальное чудо эволюции, чья история увлекательно рассказана в книге Ли Аланом Дугаткиным.

I've come across this in articles and other books, I think Alice Roberts, and have wanted to read more. Fascinating for the science and implications, and the story itself. ( )

This was a very interesting book. It was great to read about the motivation for the research and the progression of possible information gathering as techniques were discovered. It was also fun to hear about the changes that occurred as they became tamer and tamer. ( )

In 1959, two Russian geneticists, Dmitry Belyayev and Lyudmila Trut, began a selective breeding experiment to see if they could witness the process leading to domestication. They weren't sure that it would work or, if it did, whether it would happen quickly enough for them to witness the results. Fortunately for them, their experiment was successful, eventually resulting in foxes that displayed some of the same behavioral and morphological features present in dogs, which allowed them to then more closely study how their wild and tame foxes differed from each other in terms of hormone production, vocalizations, etc.

The first half of this book was more heavily focused on Soviet-era history and politics and the way they influenced this experiment. Due to Trofim Lysenko's restrictions on genetic research (Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetics), Belyayev and Trut had to be careful how they presented their experiment. In order to cover up their true intentions, they worked at a fox fur farm and claimed they were studying fox physiology in order to see if some foxes could be bred more frequently and therefore be more useful to the fur trade. While this portion was interesting, and I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the increasingly tame new generations of foxes, I went into this expecting it to be more of a popular science book and was a bit disappointed at how little science was discussed.

The second half focused a little more on scientific topics: gene activation and expression, the science of domestication, the idea of humans as "self-domesticated," studying fox vocalizations, etc. The cynical part of me sometimes wondered if the sudden increase in scientific background info was intended to distract readers from the rough patch (to put it mildly) that the fox domestication experiment hit after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Due to a sudden lack of funding, they had trouble keeping the foxes alive and had to resort to killing some of them (the book said they focused on the wild ones rather than tame, but still) and selling their fur for money.

I don't do well with print nonfiction so I listened to this instead. Unfortunately, it was a little hard for me to follow along during some of the more science-heavy portions. Also, apparently the print version has pictures of the foxes, so I missed out on that.

While I don't regret listening to this, it was too heavy on Soviet politics and history for me to call it a good popular science book. I'm also fairly certain that it wasn't a balanced look at the fox domestication experiment, and not only because Lyudmila Trut was one of the co-authors. The text was filled with fawning praise of Dmitry Belyayev - he had bucketloads of charisma and was apparently good to everyone. I couldn't help but note the one mention in the text of the time someone brought up potential ethical issues with one of his ideas (can't remember the specifics, something to do with chimps, maybe?) and the way he dismissed them as "short-sighted."

The way the domesticated fox descriptions were handled also seemed overly glowing. The narrator's tone warmed every time he described the foxes playing, bonding with their handlers, or doing cute things - I mean, yes, the foxes were fun, but the line between "these foxes are part of an experiment" and "these foxes are cute pets" was really blurred. And then the Institute really did start selling some of the foxes as pets. I had to laugh as Lyudmila Trut's supposed concern that she might not find enough people willing to take in foxes as pets - there are plenty of people who literally try to keep tigers and wolves as pets, so I imagine the real concern was more with whether there'd be enough people willing to pay handsomely for them and then deal with the issues involved with having an exotic pet, not that the book touched on that aspect at all. Plus, from what I've read even "tame" foxes have behavioral quirks you can't train them out of - again, not touched on in this book at all.

Overall, this made for a decent enough few hours of listening, but it felt pretty biased and people looking for a more science-focused read will probably be disappointed.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

As teenagers, many years ago, Lee Alan Dugatkin and I used to be playground teachers together, each of us secretly pocketing softcovers to read when our assigned areas were devoid of frolicking children. This may have been an early clue of his love of books and penchant for an academic career. Dugatkin, an evolutionary biologist who teaches at the University of Louisville, is also a science writer with a journalistic touch who is a master of finding little known,interesting stories. His Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose revealed fascinating debates not just about evolution and biology but also between snobby Europeans and their upstart revolutionary cousins in the New World. How to Tame a Fox gets into some interesting territory about how the Cold War affected East-West scientific relations and challenged funding for this amazing 60 year old experiment, and going, to domesticate wild foxes into something like a dog. The book excels in describing the scientists who pioneered this brave experiment (in the face of official Soviet hostility to genetics), especially its brave leader, Dmitri Belyaev and Dugatkin's co-author, Lyudmila Trut. They do a great job, as well, of describing the true stars of the book, the foxes, whose behavior continues to range from wild and defensive to truly tame and dog-like, depending on how they were bred. But as the book shows, the foxes have also changed physically, becoming more like dogs, so much so that in recent years some brave souls in Russia, Western Europe, and North America have even adopted them. The experiment may last another 60 years. And it is amazing to see living proof, in the blink of an eye, of the theory of evolution. The parts that most heavily engaged in the science of genetics was the one area that I struggled with, much like when Michael Lewis attempt to explain financial derivatives in The Big Short. It's a fine line between writing a science book for the layman and someone more knowledgeable. Dugatkin probably got it right for had there been less science, someone surely would be bitching about it. To me, the book's pleasures are in its more human details and stories. ( )