They showed little sign of adapting to human captivity and becoming tame. According to the Lysenko dogma then promoted by Nikita Khrushchev, captivity should itself cause tameness to appear, but it clearly was not happening. Belyaev decided to try selective breeding instead. He did this by a very simple trick. He bred from the least frightened foxes in every generation: the ones that snarled least when their cage was approached. Then he did the same for fox pups, selecting the friendliest, least timid and least aggressive pups. Out of a thousand pups bred every year, 200 were chosen as parents
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