Belyaev begins selecting tame silver foxes in Soviet Siberia

In 1959 the Soviet geneticist Dmitri Belyaev started a breeding experiment with silver foxes on fur farms in Siberia. He worked with his colleague Lyudmila Trut, who carried out much of the daily work and led the project for decades. Belyaev was based at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, part of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

The researchers picked the foxes that showed the least fear and aggression toward people and bred only those animals together. Each generation was selected on behaviour alone, not on appearance. The aim was to test whether selection for tameness could reproduce the process of animal domestication, which Belyaev suspected had shaped dogs from wolves.

Over generations the foxes became increasingly friendly, seeking human contact and wagging their tails. Some also developed traits such as floppy ears, patchy coats and curled tails, which Belyaev linked to changes in the genes and hormones that influence behaviour. The work began in a period when Soviet genetics was still recovering from the influence of Lysenkoism, a discredited state-backed doctrine, and it continued for decades. It became one of the best-known studies of domestication and remains a reference point for research into the biology of aggression and tameness.