Did the ancients domesticate foxes?

Over the past decade, archaeologists have uncovered evidence that foxes may have been kept as pets — or at least tolerated near human settlements — thousands of years ago.

To learn more about the relationship between foxes and our ancestors, I spoke to an archaeologist and a zoologist about recent scientific discoveries and what they mean for our understanding of animal domestication throughout human history.

fox burials

The latest study of archaeological burial sites where both foxes and humans have been found took place in Spain. The site belonged to an agricultural company that grew barley and legumes and looked after livestock such as sheep and cattle.

Researchers from several institutes and universities analyzed bones collected at the burial site. They studied the isotopes found in the collagen conserved in bones, which may provide insight into individuals’ diets. In human bones we can learn about the nutrition of an adult in the last five to ten years of life. For young adult dogs, nutritional dates range from six months to three years.

The first significant finding was how many fox bones the researchers found, explained by Aurora Grandal-d’Angladesenior researcher and senior lecturer at the University of A Coruña.

“The fox was already a striking find since there were only domestic animals in the Can Roqueta burials,” she said. “Later, when they worked with researchers from other sites, they saw that there were more cases, and this was a key to considering that the foxes had special value.”

The results show that the foxes had a diet similar to some of the humans and dogs. This indicates a higher degree of interaction than previously assumed between tThese societies and foxes 4,000 years ago.

The team also found something surprising: one of the four foxes, the one on the most human-like diet (large amounts of plant-based protein), had healed broken bones. The manner in which the bones were healed is consistent with the immobilization of the broken bones, presumably by humans.

“The healed fracture in the fox’s paw was a find that caught the attention of the Can Roqueta team from the moment the excavation began,” said Grandal-d’Anglade. “When I first started working with the zoo archaeologists on the isotopic analyses, we predicted an isotopic signature for the fox that was slightly different from that of a wild carnivore, but it turned out to be more specific than expected.”

In addition to the similarities between fox diets and that of humans and their dogs, the researchers found that the injured fox’s diet contained an important amount of plant-based protein. This diet is similar to that of young dogs at the site, high in grain. This could indicate that the fox was fed by humans for at least a time before it died. However, the isotopic signature is not specific enough to verify this.

Although I have examined a much older burial, dating back some 15,000 years, a similar study in Germany and Switzerland also found differences between the diets of foxes surrounding human settlements and wild foxes. In this study, however, the foxes’ diet was still markedly different from that of humans, suggesting a commensal relationship where foxes would receive food scraps from humans in one way or another.

Around the same time 13,000 years ago in the Levant, a careful burial was performed: the burial of a man with a fox. Both bones have been treated with red ocher (the other bones found at the burial site have not been treated), suggesting some sort of importance to the fox as opposed to the other animals. Furthermore, the burial was later reopened and the bones were moved to a different location, but the man and the fox were held together by these different burials.

This study, published 10 years ago, analyzed the composition of the burial site. It is noteworthy that the date of this unique human-fox burial predates the appearance of domesticated dogs in the region. Of course, figuring out the social meaning of a human society that existed thousands of years ago is a complex task. However, it’s not hard to imagine that at some point foxes were viewed as analogues of dogs and might have been useful in keeping them around.

Adaptable Animals

As noted by Kat BlackAccording to an adjunct biology teacher at Radford University who has studied foxes living in and around human territory, foxes are highly adaptable.

“As opportunistic omnivores, foxes have very flexible diets and can benefit from anthropogenic food resources such as waste from unsecured garbage cans, compost heaps, animal feed, etc.,” Black explained. “They can also benefit from high densities of prey such as mice and rats. Unlike some species that require large areas of old growth forest or pristine wetlands to thrive, red foxes readily utilize a variety of habitat types and appear to particularly enjoy marginal habitats and areas where multiple different habitat types occur in close proximity.

Whether foxes historically only lived near human settlements or were intentionally kept (or allowed) near them, urban foxes are a phenomenon for which we can find more recent analogues.

Records of foxes in urban areas exist in both the 19th and 20th centuries. Records of urban foxes can be found in areas where they are native as well as areas where they were introduced: Melbourne in the 1940s, suburbs of Stockholm in the 1960s, and Brussels in the early 1970s, for example.

Normally, these city foxes were not universally welcomed. As Black explained, living next to foxes isn’t exactly easy.

“Red foxes can become a nuisance to humans when their activities interfere with human ideals,” she said. “Knocking over trash cans, raiding gardens, digging under porches and sheds, and defecating in yards is normal red fox behavior, but not everyone is willing to tolerate such unruly neighbors. People may also have concerns about the impact foxes have on the health and safety of humans and pets. Fox attacks on people, dogs and cats are rare, but foxes can carry rabies and other diseases that can be passed on to people and pets they care about.”

However, there are records of foxes being tamed and kept as pets. In Finland, a country with many records of foxes living in or around urban centers, there are also reports of some of the city’s more tame foxes being captured and then kept as pets. For example, in 1921 a fox was captured in the barracks of the city of Turku and kept as a pet.

Time to revisit ancient archaeological sites

It’s not hard to imagine how similar situations could have arisen throughout history when someone decided to keep a fox as a pet (or perhaps wanted its fur after it grew up). But unfortunately there is still a lot we don’t know.

We still have a long way to go to answer the question of why our ancestors didn’t domesticate foxes the way they domesticated dogs. However, it’s possible that some of the critical remains have already been excavated and are awaiting analysis with new techniques and an open mind, Grandal-d’Anglade noted.

“It is quite possible that the skeletal remains of foxes that may have been found in archaeological contexts were directly classified as remains of hunted animals without considering other hypotheses. The idea that the fox is simply a wild animal is a common one among archaeologists, but I think that’s a preconceived notion,” she said. “When only pets are included in burial structures, the presence of a fox may indicate a close relationship with the buried human…. But when approaching an archaeological context, it is necessary to pay attention to different types of evidence. We studied the diet of these foxes and found that it resembles that of dogs and even children. Hence our suggestion that these foxes were not exclusively wild animals. If we check other websites from this point of view, maybe we could find similar cases. “

Maria Gatta is an ecologist and science writer with a passion for the relationships between plants, animals and humans. She also works as a biology consultant for video game companies. Follow her on Twitter: @M_Gatta