Domesticated, Tame, or Rescue — What’s the difference?

The JABCECC is home to animals that came to us from a variety of backgrounds. Many are, of course, rescues, but some come from a more interesting side of the gene pool.

Domestication

Domestication is a genetic process that happens over the course of many generations. The first animal to be domesticated was the dog, a process that happened over a long span of time; as human-friendly wolves were given access to food and resources, natural selection favored those friendly animals until they became a separate bloodline. As wolves slowly domesticated into dogs, other traits started to come along in the new genetic mix, perhaps most notably with variations in coat patterns and sizes.

Though this took place with wolves becoming dogs as many as 15,000 years ago, in 1959, a Russian geneticist by the name of Dr. Dmitri Belyaev wanted to see if domestication could happen in a laboratory setting with a different member of the canid family: the red fox (Vulpes vulpes). Belyaev believed that the key factor for domestication was selection for behavior, so over the last 60+ years, his Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia has selectively bred only the foxes that are friendliest towards humans from each generation.

Belyaev theorized that this selection for friendly behavior, physiological changes would also occur across the generations of foxes. He believed that this behavior governed the physiological changes that occur with the hormones and neurochemicals seen in domesticated dogs.

Though Belyaev passed in 1985, the work of the ICG continues, led by Dr. Lyudmila Trut. Our 12 Russian domesticated foxes at JABCECC all came directly from the ICG, and now they can live the rest of their lives in comfort in southern California!

Watch JABCECC’s co-founder, Dave Bassett, give a lecture on the background of our Russian domesticated foxes here in the video at right.

Taming

The primary distinction of domestication versus taming is the timeline: Domestication happens over many generations, but taming happens with a single wild-born animal. When an individual animal learns that, by tolerating and cooperating with humans, it can be rewarded, that is taming. An animal born in the wild can be tamed, but it categorically cannot be domesticated.

This is why, at most of our events and encounters, most of the foxes you’ll get to spend time with are our domesticated foxes: Being great animal ambassadors is literally in their DNA!

Rescue

At JABCECC, we exclusively use the term “rescue” for animals who we brought in that had no where else to go. Our rescues come from various backgrounds:

  • Some were rescued from fur farms…

  • Some were rescued from private owners who realized they were inequipped to give them a good life…

  • Some were rescued from other facilities that were closing.

However, other animals at JABCECC have been acquired from other nonprofits elsewhere for the sake of educating our local communities here in southern California & Utah, such as our wolf and black-backed jackals.

All of the animals at JABCECC help us in our mission towards conservation and education, but with their varying backgrounds and needs, they all help in different ways.

NOT Pets!

Despite the domestication and tameness of some of our animals, NO animals of these species should ever be kept as pets. (In fact, some of our rescued animals came from homes that tried to keep them as pets, then realized they couldn’t live that way!)

So yes, our Russian domesticated foxes come in a variety of beautiful coat patterns and colors. Yes, our Russian domesticated foxes can be trained to do scent work. And yes, our Russian domesticated foxes will wag their tails to greet you! But NO, they are still very much not pets! They are clever enough to get into all kinds of trouble, eat things you’d rather them not eat, and they are not house trainable.

Remember: Dogs were domesticated, over the span of millennia, tens of thousands of years ago. Foxes only started being domesticated a few decades ago… they will not reach a dog-like level of domestication in our lifetime.