Young Belyaev foxes, or kits, scamper in a cage in Siberia, Russia, where they are part of a 45-year research project to domesticate foxes. Each generation has been selectively bred for tameness—fearlessness and nonaggression toward humans. By now the foxes in the project behave like pet dogs, barking and wagging their tails at humans.
Also like pet dogs, the domesticated foxes can read
human cues much better than their wild cousins or even tame chimpanzees. The study authors call such behaviour social intelligence. They say its appearance in domesticated foxes may help us better understand how intelligence developed in humans and other animals — via boingboing
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