Domestication, Pushinka the fox, and the incredible experiments of Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut

Dmitri Belyaev (1917-1985) was a Russian geneticist who conducted groundbreaking research on foxes to better understand the process of animal domestication. Belyaev was interested in understanding how the domestication of animals occurs and how it affects their behavior and biology. He believed that domestication was a form of artificial selection, similar to the natural selection that occurs in the wild, but with humans selecting the traits that they found desirable.

To study this process, Belyaev began a long-term experiment in 1958 in which he bred silver foxes, a species closely related to dogs, for their tameness. Belyaev enlisted the help of geneticist Lyudmila Trut to help him run the experiments. Trut has continued the domesticated fox experiment started by Dmitry Belyaev and is currently the director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia. Trut worked alongside Belyaev for many years and was instrumental in the success of the domesticated fox experiment. She helped to select the tamest foxes from each generation for breeding and was involved in analyzing the changes in their behavior and genetics over time. Under Trut's leadership, the experiment has continued to produce fascinating results and has also provided valuable insights into the process of domestication and the genetic and behavioral changes that occur as a result.