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In an ancient grave in what is now northwestern Argentina, a person was buried with a canine companion — but it wasn’t a pet-friendly dog, according to new research. The burial contained the skeleton of a type of dog that may have once competed with dogs for the affections of humans: a fox.
People and dogs have a long history. The relationship between the two species is tens of thousands of years old. However, a new analysis of evidence from a nearly 1,500-year-old burial in Patagonia points to a similarly close connection between a hunter-gatherer from southern South America and the extinct large fox species Dusicyon avus.
Archaeologists first unearthed a nearly complete D. avus skeleton buried next to a human in 1991 at Cañada Seca in northern Patagonia. Dr. Ophélie said that there were no cutting marks on the bones, so the fox was not eaten. Lebrasseur is a researcher at the Wellcome Trust Palaeogenomics and Bio-Archaeology Research Network at the University of Oxford’s School of Archeology in the United Kingdom.
In-depth analysis of ancient DNA and radiocarbon dating confirmed the fox’s species and age, and examination of collagen in the fox’s remains revealed that the fox ate the same food as this group of humans. In addition to the skeleton’s placement in the grave, the animal’s diet also indicates that the fox was domesticated and kept as a pet, scientists wrote in a report published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
This discovery adds to growing evidence from burial sites on other continents that foxes were domesticated by humans and shared a bond based on friendship.
Fox and hunter-gatherer society
D. avus lived from the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) into the Holocene and became extinct about 500 years ago. It was about the size of a modern German shepherd but much less bulky and could weigh up to 15 kilograms.
The research was conducted by researcher Dr. from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina. “In general, Dusicyon avus has a carnivorous diet,” said Lebrasseur, who manages it with Cinthia Abbona. But when scientists tested the fox skeleton in the grave, they found that its diet was less carnivorous than expected and more similar to the diet of humans.
“This suggests that either the community was feeding it, or it was around the community and was feeding on kitchen waste,” Lebrasseur told CNN. “This suggests a closer relationship and integration of canids within society.”
Paleobiologist Dr. from Universidade da Coruña in Spain. The idea that foxes were pets in South America is consistent with evidence from other fox graves in Europe and Asia, Aurora Grandal-d’Anglade said. Grandal-d’Anglade, who was not involved in the new study, had previously described Bronze Age graves in the Iberian Peninsula that included dozens of dogs and four foxes buried along with humans. Researchers found that foxes lined up very similarly to dogs; This suggests that they were also friends with humans.
“There is no reason why foxes cannot be domesticated,” Grandal-d’Anglade said in an email to CNN. “We know that people in many completely different societies often kept domesticated animals (not only canids, but also, for example, monkeys, birds, reptiles) simply as companion animals. “From this perspective, more and more areas are emerging where foxes play the role of pets.”
Finding D. avus in a human grave was surprising for another reason; While the species was once common in southern South America, it was previously unknown in this part of Patagonia. Hunter-gatherers living in the area generally stayed within a range of about 70 kilometers, so they likely encountered the friendly fox within that range, according to the study.
“In order for Dusicyon avus to integrate into the community, it needs to be part of the immediate environment,” Lebrasseur said.
What do fox graves reveal about ‘man’s best friend’?
The analysis also shed light on what drove foxes to extinction, or rather what did not. One hypothesis suggested that foxes interbred with dogs that European colonists brought to South America, and that interbreeding eventually caused fox extinction. But the fox’s DNA tells a different story, the study authors reported.
“Based on what we were able to recover and the technique we developed at Oxford a few years ago, we hypothesized that crossbreeding between domestic dogs and Dusicyon avus would not produce fertile offspring,” Lebrasseur said.
However, it is still possible that dogs are not entirely innocent in the decline of foxes. Dogs, which have a diet similar to D. avus, may have accelerated their extinction by competing with foxes. Lebrasseur added that dogs may have also carried and transmitted diseases that made foxes sick.
Experts often explain dog domestication as something that happened because people realized they could put dogs to work as hunters or herders, Grandal-d’Anglade said. But the D. avus skeleton and other fox burials at Cañada Seca imply that an animal need not be a useful worker to be fed by humans, but can simply be a companion.
“The proliferation of different species of canids in close association with humans seems to indicate that this is, in principle, a relationship of love and companionship,” Grandal-d’Anglade said. “The fact that we find them in so many different societies and on different continents suggests that keeping animals for companionship and not just as working or meat animals is an ancestral trait in humans.”
Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American, and How It Works magazines.
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