But then it all fell apart:
The goal of Soviet zoologist Dmitry Belyaev’s 60-year experiment with silver foxes (Vulpes vulpes) in Siberia was to reveal the evolutionary and genetic bases of domestication.
The experiment, begun in 1959 at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia, was based solidly in conventional Darwinian evolution: The researchers would selectively breeding the friendliest foxes and track the inherited characteristics that accompany tameness.
Denyse O’Leary, “Tame animals, not wild ones, are mysterious” at Mind Matters News
It all sounded like perfect schoolbook Darwinism. Until someone made a issue of the fact that the foxes were the descendants of already-tame foxes in Prince Edward Island (province) in Canada.
Tameness is still a mystery. Wildness isn’t.
See also: The real reason why only human beings speak. Language is a tool for abstract thinking—a necessary tool for abstraction—and humans are the only animals who think abstractly. (Michael Egnor)
and
Researchers: Apes are just like us! And we’re not doing the right things to make them start behaving that way…