Domesticated Foxes!

A couple days ago an article appeared on the BBC website about archaeological finds from South America which showed an extinct species of fox buried with human remains. Cool! But the article was very misleading, in that it seems to imply that foxes were domesticated before dogs. Here's the lead: 'Our ancestors may have kept foxes as pets long before domestic dogs came on the scene.'

Another article in the Daily Mail implies the same thing, that early man's 'best friend was the fox'. The problem is neither article states, at least in the headline, where 'early' man, or 'our ancestors' were from and how old 'early' is. The burial is from 1500 years ago. Dogs were domesticated tens of thousands, if not more, years before that. Of course, in that region of South America (Patagonia), foxes seem to have been domesticated before the arrival (to that area) of domesticated dogs, but, neither article says that.

An image of the extinct fox, from the New York Times.

Dogs: Part II - Wolves and Domestication

A little over a month ago, I posted an OT which was about dogs and some aspects of their domestication. It was called 'Dogs, Dogs, Dogs - Wow' and was Part I of this short series.

Here's Part II. This post is about that same book (Dogs, Past and Present: An Interdisciplinary Perspective). This post covers a very tiny bit of section I of the book on dog genetics and more.

The Wolf's Family Portrait by Rodney L. Honeycutt from Wikipedia