Are foxes becoming domesticated?
Videos of friendly, gentle foxes approaching humans, seemingly wanting to play, are going viral on TikTok. But just because a species is sociable doesn't necessarily make it domesticated.
In a video with over one million views on TikTok, a wild fox plays with what appears to be a ball, letting it roll down a hilly slope and chasing after it. The video is tagged #domesticatedfox. “He probably watched dogs playing fetch from afar,” one commenter writes. “He just wants to be a good boy too.” In another TikTok, a wild fox approaches a human’s outstretched hand. An enamored commenter jokes: "If not pet, why pet-shaped?"
A slew of viral videos on social media have many on the internet speculating that foxes are self-domesticating, meaning they have become more human-friendly over time without any explicit intervention or deliberate breeding.
But is it true? To be considered domesticated, an animal must experience both behavioral and physical changes; they grow tamer and often evolve to be smaller than the wild animal in some way. “The final clincher is the genetics,” Blake Morton, an animal behaviorist at the University of Hull in the UK, says. It not enough for one generation of an animal to show a softer side to humans. Those behaviors and traits must pass then down to their offspring.
There's evidence some modern foxes are showing some small signs of domestication. One study that found urban foxes had shorter snouts and smaller skulls than rural foxes. And Morton’s own research found urban foxes were “less afraid and more exploratory” than rural wild foxes when given feeder puzzles. That said, Morton is adamant that “none of this is direct proof of domestication.”
What’s more, the myth of self-domestication could actually be hurting foxes, and that can lead to concerning behavior. “We often see viral images or videos of foxes approaching urban environments, which can fuel the misconception that foxes are self-domesticating,” says Cinthia Abbona, a biologist with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina. “Suggesting that wild foxes are on a pathway to domestication risks normalizing practices that can be harmful both to the animals and to humans.”
Why are foxes near people if they don’t want to be pets?
Foxes do share some behaviors with dogs, like tail-wagging, which can make them seem friendly. But true self-domestication—among any species—would be extraordinary. "No animal is known to have truly self-domesticated," Abbona says.
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The validity of the concept itself is still debated among scientists, Morton adds. For example, a 2012 study suggested that bonobos may have self-domesticated, growing less aggressive over time. But that finding has since been challenged "by studies showing that bonobos aren’t as tolerant as once believed," he explains.
People who see evidence of “self-domestication” are confusing it with habituation, Morton says. Habituation happens when an animal adapts to living with humans after repeated exposure without any negative consequences. Foxes might first be attracted to mild city climates, he explains, and then find ample food there. “There are lots of rats [to eat] everywhere,” Morton says. “People will feed [foxes] in their gardens.” Then the foxes get used to being around people.
Trevor Williams—the founder of The Fox Project, which rescues and rehabilitates about 1,500 wild foxes a year in the UK—says even though foxes can find their own food, they’ll take the easy way out first by hanging around humans, who are sure to drop scraps at some point. “I know two [London] restaurants that feed their foxes,” he says. “One's an Indian restaurant and one's an Italian restaurant, so one lot are getting curry all the time, and the others are getting pasta.” For the foxes, it’s a crafty meal hack, but they don’t need the help. “They're fine [without you],” Williams says. “They'll take your handout and then go eat a rat somewhere in the sewage pipe.”
Williams also thinks that a “significant” number of London’s 15,000 foxes are afflicted with toxoplasmosis, a common parasitic illness; it’s not transmissible to humans from foxes, but it can make animals lose their fear response. In this video with over two million views, for example, a wild fox approaches a human, who sticks out their hand; the nervous fox sniffs it before darting away. (Mani Lejeune, an expert in parasitology at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, says London foxes aren't alone—the global prevalence of toxoplasmosis in foxes is thought to be at least 39 percent, and nearly 50 percent in the U.S.)
“There isn't that natural instinct to just run for it and ask questions later, which is the way foxes would normally behave,” Williams says. “[Foxes in cities] are no more domesticated than a rural animal. They just basically understand us better.”
Have foxes ever been domesticated in human history?
Foxes might not want to be our BFFs in this current era, but were they ever?
Two recent studies suggest foxes may once have been kept as pets: A 2025 study found that indigenous South American cultures had semi-tame pet foxes known as Fuegian Dogs. And in another study, archaeologists found a now-extinct fox species, known as Dusicyon avus, buried with their person, suggesting that man's best friend may once have been a fox.
“What surprised us here was the depth of the relationship suggested by the co-burial, which is rare and strongly symbolic,” says Abbona, a co-author of the D. avus study. “Foxes are usually solitary and not easily tamed.”
But again, don’t confuse this for true domestication. “For prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies, keeping wild animals was likely far less unusual than it seems to us today,” Abbona says.
The only record of domesticated foxes comes from a controversial experiment by Russian geneticists, who selectively bred wild foxes for almost 60 years, beginning in the mid twentieth century. With each generation of foxes, geneticists would breed the tamest animals, eventually producing “foxes that licked the hand of experimenters…and wagged their tails when humans approached.”
It did not end well for many of the foxes: Hundreds who displayed aggressive, wild behaviors—that is, natural fox behaviors—were killed or sold to fur farms or the exotic pet trade.
“It does take years of science and selective breeding to be able to create a domestic animal,” says Kimberly DeFisher, the president and founder of Arctic Fox Daily Wildlife Rescue, a fox sanctuary in Williamson, New York. But DeFisher, who cares for 35 captive-bred foxes who were abandoned or unwanted after being pets, is quick to call the experiment “unethical.”
While there are no official statistics, DeFisher estimates that, in the U.S. today, at least 50 percent of “pet” foxes purchased from the exotic pet trade “end up either displaced, euthanized, or illegally released” before they turn one year old once owners realize they’re actually stuck with a wild animal.
“People think that they are going to be like a puppy, and it's because they see these viral videos that show dog-like traits,” she explains. But foxes tend to mark everywhere indoors—“anything that smells new, anything they don't like, anything that they want to save for later”—and their pee is “very skunky and musky-smelling,” she adds. (At her sanctuary, DeFisher regularly films interactions with her rescued wild foxes; the videos offer a unique, realistic glimpse into fox behavior. In a recent reel, Portia—a wild fox who is unreleasable after being stolen from the wild and habituated as a pet—climbs on top of DeFisher’s head and promptly pees on it.)
Even the 2025 study, which determined that indigenous South American cultures once kept the “semi-tame pet fox,” notes that they were often described as “ill-natured, ferocious, half-wild, and more.” While there is no definitive answer as to how those animals went extinct, one theory in the study posits that they were intentionally replaced by tamer dogs.
Will we ever have domesticated pet foxes?
For anyone wishing for a tame pet fox who won’t pee on your head, don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Morton speculates that twenty-first-century self-domestication is out of the question.
“Definitely not within our lifetimes, and it wouldn’t be for many, many generations,” he says. “It took many thousands of years for dogs to become domesticated.”
So, what should you do if you come across a fox in the wild—or on a sidewalk?
Petting is out of the question, and you shouldn’t attempt to hand-feed them, either. For example, if a fox becomes habituated to hand-feeding, they might sniff the hand of a new person and try to nibble it, thinking they’re being offered food.
That would be a “fatal mistake,” Williams says. In the UK, it’s legal to call a private company “to deal with a fox,” he says. In the U.S., government authorities can take an animal and euthanize them.
“These videos…they think that this looks really cute and magical, almost a very Snow White–esque feeling,” DeFisher says. “It's really not safe for the fox, because if they end up learning to trust this one person, they might get a little bit more relaxed around the next person. And the problem is, most people don't see a wild fox coming up close to them as magical. They'll panic. They'll call authorities.”
Williams agrees: “Don't just assume that wildlife needs you. It doesn't, for the most part, need you at all.”
