Foxes

The most common type of fox, the red fox, has a silver morph whose pelt was once worth 40 beaver skins.

Silver foxes have been raised in fur farms since the 1870s in P.E.I., for collars and cuffs and stoles and such.

In the 1950s, Soviet scientist Dimitri Belayev sought to domesticate the silver fox. He managed to carry out his work by pretending to study animal physiology, which was considered acceptable by the communist party. He proceeded by breeding the tamest foxes, as judged by their behaviour, hypothesizing that behavior is rooted in physiology.

The new foxes lost their fox smell, put down their ears, began wagging their tail when happy, and started barking.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the program ran into funding problems and cut the program dramatically, selling many of the foxes as pets.

Another of Belayev's fox experiments consisted of selectively breeding the most agressive specimens to create vicious, killer foxes.