RUSSIA-NATURE-ANIMALS-SCIENCE-GENETICS

Veterinary students inspect a fox at Belyayev fox facility of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences outside Siberian city of Novosibirsk on September 10, 2020. - The official start of the Soviet experiment to better understand the domestication of animals by humans began in 1959, and was initiated by geneticists Dmitri Beliaiev and Lioudmila Trout on a farm in Akademgorodok, the scientific center of excellence in Siberia. Their primary objective was to domesticate foxes, to understand how the ancestor of wolves, another canine, evolved into a loyal and loving dog. And understand what this domestication tells us about the genetic evolution of species. (Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP) (Photo by ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images)