How I trained my fox to be like a household pet dog

[ShaDeVi]

These remarkable pictures show how young Siberian scientist Irina Mukhamedshina, 22, has trained a fox to be as obedient as a dog.

Playful: Nyuta the fox enjoys her training with Irina Mukhamedshina. Picture: The Siberian Times
The experiment was on her own initiative, though she used foxes from a special Novosibirsk Institute of Cytology and Genetics farm, where research into taming the animals have provided remarkable insights into how - over many thousands of years - man domesticated wild animals into pets.

'I had seen these foxes daily, wiggling their tails and jumping to get a tiniest bit of human attention, and got really curious about the possibility of working with them the same way as I used to do with dogs', said Irina.

Through her teens she had trained dogs and for several years has been doing so professionally.

'I asked my tutors if I could try, got permission and went to choose myself a couple of baby foxes.

'I needed them to be young, because then I could use food motivation to train some basic commands.

'Later on, the constant hunger stops prevailing over other instincts, and you have to work with game motivation, which is also possible, but slightly more difficult. I took two foxes, and started working with them at the farm.

I-i-its ticklish! Irina Mukhamedshina, PhD student of Novosibirsk Institute of Cytology and Genetics pictured with the fox she trained. Picture: The Siberian Times
http://siberiantimes.com/science/casest ... d-pet-dog/

Remarkable.

[_Bisu_]

Aww, what a cute little fox....and so well trained. It's shame that they are not more common as pets, it's quite clear they are harmless.

[*BlackFox]

Cute!
But animals kept on wire cages.. with no solid flooring. That's cruel!

[ltsune]

That fox really looks cute! I do believer, however, that one of the primary reasons why foxes aren't usually used as pets is because of the type of Scabies that foxes can often get.

In Denmark, that illness nearly killed the entire population of foxes at one point.

[BuDo]

It's a rather selfish act on her part....she better keep them as pets (if it's legally possible...which I sorta doubt) or else she just put them in more danger than they would normally face in the wild... Making them accustom to humans and then having to release them back into the wild is a recipe for disaster....

[Blindfire]

It's a rather selfish act on her part....she better keep them as pets (if it's legally possible...which I sorta doubt)

It's legal to keep them as pets in Russia. There is a well-known Russian breeder that specifically breeds red foxes as household pets. Many states in the US also allows red foxes to be kept as pets and their bloodlines often can be traced back to this Russian breeder.

[Isis]

Even in the UK it is legal to keep red foxes.

[BuDo]

Interesting...