PUSHINKA THE BARKING FOX

A sidebar to a true story of fox-domestication experiments
in Siberia is presented in this picture book.

For 60 years, Russian scientist and co-author Trut has been
involved in the genetic experimentation on the domestication of foxes, and this
picture book tells a story of her relationship with one particular fox named
Pushinka. Pushinka lived in “Lyudmila’s” home in Siberia, as did her pups after
they were born. Dugatkin and Trut’s feel-good story (accompanied by uninspired
photos that trot along in a predictable manner) omits the less-uplifting facts.
The majority of the foxes used in the domestication experiment live in small
wire cages in sheds, and each year the friendliest, as determined by
human-administered tests, are selected to breed. The ones not selected are sold
to fur farms to become pelts. In addition to selectively breeding foxes for
friendliness, Trut also selects and breeds the most aggressive foxes to create
hyperaggression in order to study the biology of domestication. Perhaps the
most egregious misrepresentation, though, is the schmaltzy attribution of
Pushinka’s domesticated behavior toward Trut as the result of love. One day
Pushinka barks to warn Trut of an intruder: “Foxes DON’T bark! But love, you
see, changes us”—an assertion that ignores the very science that created
Pushinka’s behavior: the product of decades of selected breeding, not love.
Also, foxes do bark.