Rapid Evolution: Foxes’ Social Intelligence
Experimental domestication of foxes yields clues to cognitive evolution. Dogs have an unusual ability for reading human communicative gestures (e.g., pointing) in comparison to either nonhuman primates (including chimpanzees) or wolves.
To better understand how dogs evolved their unusual social cognitive ability, the researchers studied an experimental population of foxes that have been bred in Siberia, Russia, over the last 45 years to exhibit, over generations, increasingly friendly behavior toward humans. After dozens of generations, these foxes now behave toward people much as pet dogs do–they even bark and wag their tails at the sight of a human. Critically, these foxes were not specifically selected during breeding for their social intelligence. However, the current study found that although the foxes were not intentionally selected to be more skillful at solving social problems, they are in fact just as skillful as domestic dogs at reading human social cues.
These results suggest that sociocognitive evolution has occurred in the experimental foxes, and possibly domestic primates, as a correlated by-product of selection on systems mediating fear and aggression, and it is likely the observed social cognitive evolution did not require direct selection for improved social cognitive ability.
“Social Cognitive Evolution in Captive Foxes Is a Correlated By-Product of Experimental Domestication“: Brian Hare, Irene Plyusnina, Natalie Ignacio, Olesya Schepina, Anna Stepika, Richard Wrangham and Lyudmila Trut