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This is a photo of a red fox, taken at the British Wildlife Centre (www.britishwildlifecentre.co.uk).
I'm not sure I like the way this fox is staring into the middle distance ! It gives a rather dignified air. Also it's nice for him to be framed by the pretty flowers :-)
A strain of truly domesticated red foxes was introduced by Russian geneticist Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyaev who, over a 40 year period, bred several generations of silver morph foxes on fur farms, selecting only those individuals that showed the least fear of humans.
Eventually, Belyaev's team selected only those that showed the most positive response to humans, thus resulting in a population of foxes whose behaviour and appearance was significantly changed. After about ten generations of controlled breeding, these foxes no longer showed any fear of humans, and often wagged their tails and licked their human caretakers to show affection.
These behavioural changes were accompanied by physical alterations, which included piebald coats, floppy ears in pups, and curled tails, similar to traits that distinguish domestic dogs from wolves.
During the post-Soviet economic crisis of the 1990s, the project ran into funding constraints and was forced to reduce the number of animals from 700 to 100 and began funding the ongoing efforts in part through sales of the strain as pets in addition to looking into other ways to support the project.