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Foxes as pets Anonymous
Why I have ever heard of domesticated foxes sold as pets?

Foxes are normally extremely wary of humans and are not kept as pets (with the exception of the fennec); however, the silver fox was successfully domesticated in Russia after a 45 year selective breeding program. This selective breeding also resulted in physical and behavioural traits appearing that are frequently seen in domestic cats, dogs, and other animals: pigmentation changes, floppy ears, and curly tails.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox#General_characteristics
http://reactor-core.org/taming-foxes.html
>> Anonymous
>>235275
Why I have NEVER heard* sorry
>> Anonymous
You don't intarwebs/lurk enough?

Exotic pets is a huge industry - but it's also slightly underground since there's so many people working against it because "omg wild animals aren't pets." It takes some amount of public awareness for word to get out too - i.e the Harry Potter craze that caused pet stores to sell owls.

I can sympathise though. There was a man in Toronto that used to walk around with his pet red fox, I didn't really know that people kept foxes until then, I was about 15 at the time.

Also, in b4 couch-eating fox.
>> Anonymous
Why? Because they like to use a litter box and their urine smells like fucking skunk.
>> Anonymous
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obligatory
>> Anonymous
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>>235294
some dogs do it too, I was talking about domesticated foxes instead of keeping wild foxes.
>> Anonymous
>>235335
like those docile ones they bread in russia with the floppy ears and such? i've never heard anything about them either beyond the original (unintentional) experiment.
>> Anonymous
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>>235338
Yeah, they had all the hard work but in the end the foxes not good for fur.
They could sell them for capitalists!
Something like that could be done with red foxes too...
>> Anonymous
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It seems that the domesticade one don't stink like ethe wild ones>>235291

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Silver_Fox
The Tame Silver Fox is the result of nearly 50 years of experiments in the Soviet Union and Russia to domesticate the silver morph of the Red Fox. Notably, the foxes not only become more tame, but more dog-like as well: the new foxes lost their distinctive musky "fox smell", became more friendly with humans, put their ears down (like dogs), wagged their tails when happy and began to vocalize and bark like domesticated dogs. The breeding project was set up by the Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev.

The BBC have a more awww like article
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4240000/newsid_4245900/4245983.stm
>> Anonymous
Can I get a red one, or do I have to paint it red?
>> Anonymous
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>>235366
Seems that they only domesticated the silver fox...

But you can get a fennec.
The fennec is considered the only species of fox which can properly be kept as a pet. Although it cannot be considered domesticated, they can be kept in a domestic setting similar to dogs or cats. In the United States there is a relatively established community of fennec owners and breeders.
>> Anonymous
>>235357

do want
>> Anonymous
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It seems that some people keep wild red foxes...

but wild foxes have some problems like any other wild mammal like try to make a nest in your couch, smell (almost all mammals smell bad, it's part of their communication including us, that's why we need shower and deodorant every day) and a possible destrutive nature like>>235294(but I already have seem this behaviour with domestic animals)

I wish that people domesticate the red fox too... I think that they are the cutest (a white fox is fine too
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
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the artic fox is also cute, but it only stays with the white fur in the winter... the small ears are cute...

The fennec is cute too but the ears looks like the gremlins o_o
>> Anonymous
>>235357
crap, there's only 100 of them left? c'mon, russia! export! i'm sure you could find someone willing to start breeding them for pets in the states, or even western europe.
>> Anonymous
>>235483
the summer form is pretty darn cute as well
>> Anonymous
>>235452
o__o i so want one.
>> Anonymous
>>235514
Pretty sure they'd be outlawed in the states, all of the cool pets are.
Axolotls
Glofish
Squirells
Ants.
>> Anonymous
>>235720
Maybe in your state. I don't know of any cool pets being b& in Indiana.
>> Anonymous
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>>235651
>> Anonymous
>>235720

In Oregon, you just need to get a license to keep squirrels.
>> Anonymous
>>235275
A red fox isn't that hard to keep, you just have to
A.) Have the resources
B.) Have more time for the actual creature than you would say for a small child
C.) Be aware of their habits, these are not domesticated creatures, don't expect it to act like one

You can keep a loving happy red fox, but the only way you're going to get that kind of animal is more attention than you ever give to your current animal / or even first born.
>> Anonymous
>>235736
Is there an 'after' pic showing that couch spread over the entire room?
>> Anonymous
What if I kept them outside in a big yard? Perhaps building them a place to make nest and stuff like that. Where I live we don't get winter, so that's not a problem.
>> Anonymous
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The fennec is considered the only species of fox which can properly be kept as a pet. Although it cannot be considered domesticated, they can be kept in a domestic setting similar to dogs or cats. In the United States and Canada there is a relatively established community of fennec owners and breeders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fennec#Domestication

Squirrels are interesting too, I wish that they were domesticated too...
>> Anonymous
>>235744
There is still the matter of constant attention, + they dig like you would not believe, most people who have kept foxes create an outdoor enclosure for them.
>> Anonymous
>>235746
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HbiPXER-mc ;-;
>> Anonymous
>>235756
The URL contained a malformed video ID.

Malformed?
>> Anonymous
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awww
>> Anonymous
>>235763
You probably included the ;-; at the end of it by mistake.
>> Anonymous
>>235829
I didn't included the ;-;, the link doesn't works here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HbiPXER

It's not invalid, it's malformed...

Obs: Now I included the ;-; and the link worked O_O
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HbiPXER-mc ;-;
>> Anonymous
>>235833
me again, it was the "mc" ¬_¬"
>> Anonymous
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>>235838
I lol'd.
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
>>235366
I was reading, it seems that the domesticated silver and the red fox are the same species, if so should be easy to create a tame red fox using domesticated silver foxes and wild red foxes.
>> Anonymous
>>235996
Um, yeah it would work but you'd be getting rid of 45 of intensive selective breeding and removing just about any benefits you would have gotten.
>> Anonymous
>>236012
45 of what? Years?

The offspring would be heterozygous hybrids, and as such none of them would be perfectly tame (unless the alleles associated with it are for some reason dominant) but breeding such hybrids together would allow a combination of domestic fox tameness and red fox colour. Granted, you'd have to do a lot of breeding with first generation hybrids to get that combination, but it wouldn't take THAT long.

Alas, we will never get to do this, thanks to the Russians wanting to keep ALL the foxes to themselves (until some or other disease eventually wipes the whole population out)
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
>>236012
Not really, make some red-silver hybrids (half of the docile genes and half of the red genes.
and you will be abble to domesticate the red fox much more faster (instead of using wild red foxes)

It's like to start using 50% domesticated instead of 1%.

The Red Fox reaches sexual maturity by ten months of age, so you will have a generation per year, in something about 4 or 5 years you will have some fully domesticated red foxes
>> Anonymous
1) Steal Baby Foxes from Den
2) ???
3) Profit!
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
Following the demise of the Soviet Union, the project has run into serious financial problems. In 1996 there were 700 tame foxes, but in 1998, without enough funds for food and salaries, they had to cut the number to 100. Most of their expenses are covered by selling them as pets, but they remain in a difficult situation, looking for new sources of revenue from outside funding.

From wikipedia
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
>>236196
I think that I should explain better, since they are in need of money maybe they would sell for people outside Russia... just need to discover the ir e-mail
>> Anonymous
Good luck ever finding one for sale furfag.
>> Anonymous
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>>236251
Don't wish them luck. They want to rape me. =(
>> robotnic
wernt ferrets first domesticated
>> Anonymous
Instead of telling people on 4chan you want one, maybe you should get off your ass and go get one. Get yourself a wildlife hobby permit, Google exotic pets or red foxes or whatever, ???, profit, etc.

There's no use in arguing this point over and over. Any fucking animal can be kept captive. It's very unlikely you could purchase one of only 100 foxes kept in this experiment, and good look getting yourself 50,000 foxes to breed to this degree of domestication. Just get a first gen, or from a fur farm, you don't need a fucking floppy-eared barking fox anyway.
>> Anonymous
do a barrel roll, fox!!
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
>>236377
I don't want to spend 45 years of my life making something that already is done.

If you have some tame silver foxes you would need only one red fox to add the red fur gene, and in some years we will have a population with most silver and some reds...
>> Anonymous
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My fox is bigger than your fox!
>> Anonymous
I had a half fox/something that I got from the pound a long time ago. It was a good animal, but I couldn't really call it a pet, it was a wild animal.
>> Anonymous
>>236588
Forced Perspective Fox is fuxing your perspective.
>> Anonymous
>>236592

Either you had a fox or a wild dog; foxes can't interbreed with other canids because of a difference in the amount of chromosomes.
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
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>>236592
Why do you think it was a half fox?

>>236597
Where is your God now?

Just kidding
It's really a fox, but it's so big that people call it wolf, maned wolf. It's shy and docile but not domesticated.
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
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another pic.
>> Anonymous
http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=2302&rendTypeId=4


What a cute maned wolf. :D
>> Anonymous
>>236612

LOL people don't know about maned wolves?
>> Anonymous
>>236604

You may be very well right. He looked like>>235932but a little meatier.

Boy could he fly though. He was like the mach 5.
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
A good article, but in portuguese...

http://www.infolobo.org/Raposa.html
It's the http://reactor-core.org/taming-foxes.html resumed
>> Anonymous
>>236604
It's not just about chromosomes. True, foxes can't breed with most canids, especially ones in the Canis genus (wolves, dogs, jackals etc), but it has more to do with gene-level difference and special molecules in the sperm and egg than chromosome number. If the genes in the cromosomes are more or less the same, the different number will only lower the probability of fertilization and the fertility of the resulting offspring somewhat. But even with odd number of chromosomes some hybrids manage to produce offspring. For example domestic horses and Przewalski horses produce fertile hybrid offspring despite a different chromosome number.
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
Found something:

American researchers have suggested that the foxes be made available as pets, partly to ensure their survival should the Novosibirsk colony be wiped out by disease.
“There was a time when Soviet science was in a desperate state and Belyaev’s foxes were endangered,” said Ray Coppinger, a dog biologist at Hampshire College in Massachusetts who tried to obtain some of the foxes to help preserve them. But the animals seem to have left Russia only once, for Finland, in a colony that no longer survives.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/health/25rats.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=ee8f5fbaf057681
4&ex=1311480000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
It seems that someone will need to go to Russia to get some of them...
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
And hay!
There was far more to Belyaev’s experiment than the production of tame foxes. He developed a parallel colony of vicious foxes, and he started domesticating other animals, like river otters and mink. Realizing that genetics can be better studied in smaller animals, Belyaev also started a study of rats, beginning with wild rats caught locally. His rat experiment was continued after his death by Irina Plyusnina. Siberian gray rats caught in the wild, bred separately for tameness and for ferocity, have developed these entirely different behaviors in only 60 or so generations.
>> Anonymous
>>237061
How awesome would it be to have an otter for a pet?
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
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I think that a squirrel would be nice too, they already can be kept as pets but I think that they are still wild animals.

Squirrels are occasionally kept as household pets, provided they are selected young enough and are hand raised in a proper fashion. They can be taught to do tricks, and are said to be as intelligent as dogs in their ability to learn behaviors. In these cases, a large cage and a balanced diet with good variety will keep a pet squirrel healthy and happy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squirel#Relationship_with_humans
>> Anonymous
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This is my pet flying squirrel Ickarus. Is it illegal for me to have him? Not that I'm going to do anything if it is, I'm just curious. He acts pretty domesticated.
>> Anonymous
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>>237210
feeding time!!
>> Anonymous
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HEY they can eat on their own now!
>> Anonymous
>>237210
Um, did you read this part?

>>Hand feeding is not recommended, however, because squirrels may carry plague or other animal-borne diseases.

The motherfucking plague? I'll keep my dogs.
>> te-kun !Tkuncv4dfQ
>>237228
Cats and dogs can carry the plague too, the problem is the infected flea.

If your dog were bitten by a infected flea it may carry the plague too, and them one of his fleas may give you a gift.
>> Anonymous
No russians in this board?
>> Anonymous
.
>> Anonymous
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>>237737