Exotic animal owners often end up in the furry community the level of obsession and dedication needed to care for an unconventional pet is much higher than for a dog or cat owner, so exotic pet owners tend to make their pets a more prominent part of their lives than other pet owners. His profile on says, “I live on the awesome furry and TF artwork of y’all artists here, but I have the privilege and responsibility to love and take care of my pet red fox Ron! Greetings from Mountain Home, Arkansas!” He has a mostly unused DeviantArt page and has posted many pictures of himself in a giant blue fox costume, along with trip reports from furry conventions. He’s also highly active on furry forums, where he posts under the name Albi Azul. He posts dozens of videos of his pet red fox Rob (now deceased) on YouTube, and is very active on all kinds of pet fox forums. But they’re not as easy to acquire as a dog.Įric Mason currently lives in Arkansas, and is one of the most dedicated and visible fox owners on the internet. When we tried to breed a fox that would act more like a dog, we ended up with a fox that looked more like a dog. The animals developed different coat patterns, floppier ears, tails that curled over their backs-totally unknown in wild foxes. The study found that though they were selectively breeding only for behavior, they began seeing new common physical traits. These domesticated foxes, on the other hand, have between 30 and 35 generations of selective breeding behind them, with careful monitoring to ensure a lack of inbreeding, and they’re not even close to wild-in fact, they probably wouldn’t survive in the wild.Īfter a few generations, the results began to get a little weird. Tame foxes may not flee or attack, but they also won’t cuddle. Wild foxes will not do this they will either run away from you or attempt to bite your face off.
It loves and craves attention from people, it’ll lick your face, it’ll cuddle with you, it’ll wag its giant puffy tail when it sees you, it’ll play with toys in your house while you try to take the perfect Instagram picture of it. The Soviet (and later, Russian) study out there in Siberia did eventually breed a domesticated silver fox (read: a red fox with silver fur) that’s pretty close to our dream fox. In the case of animals that would, in the wild, be aggressive towards humans, those traits are easy to decide on: we want the most docile, least aggressive, and least skittish animal. Domestication is actually change at the genetic level: an animal repeatedly breeds, either through intentional human effort or not (or a combination of the two), to emphasize certain behavioral traits. You can tame many wild animals so they won’t try to kill you, by raising them from birth, but that’s just learned behavior that animal is unlikely to exhibit what we know as affection toward you, and the behavior it does have is not passed down to the tamed animal’s offspring. What is a domesticated fox?ĭomestication is not like taming. All you need is $8,000 and the approval of Kay Fedewa, the exclusive importer of domesticated foxes in the US. They’re a little unconventional, and they require a little bit of extra attention, but if you want a pet fox, you can have a pet fox. But domesticated foxes, which can only be found at that Siberian facility, are not horrible pets.