“The work uses modern genomics to understand the genetics behind the foxes’
changes in personality and appearance. The results are not nearly as widely
known among scientists, not to mention the public, as they deserve to be.”
I’m not convinced of that. I’ve seen several articles on these foxes.
Lawrence
How to tame a grice and build a grice.
There was a review in today’s NYT of “How to tame a fox (and build a dog)”, by
L. Dugatkin.
It may relate to our recent exchange with L. Helm. So I will provide some
excerpts with running commentary. The reviewer notes:
“This essay sets out to answer a simple-seeming question:
i. What makes a dog a dog?”
For Grice this is analytic. Or is it? What is the conceptual analysis of ‘dog’?
The reviewer goes on:
“Put another way, how did an animal that started out as a bloodthirsty predator
become one that now wants nothing more than a nice belly rub and the chance to
gaze adoringly at a member of another species?”
The reviewer goes on:
“Dmitri Belyaev decides to address this puzzle by taking the unheard-of tack of
replicating the domestication process in real time. He took silver foxes,
widely bred in vast farms for their luxurious pelts, and made them into
friendly house pets.”
“It was a deceptively simple process.”
“Take the puppies from only the friendliest foxes, breed them and repeat.”
“The experiment is still ongoing, with 56 generations of foxes bred to date — a
far cry from the snarling creatures that used to snap at the hands of their
caretakers when the research began. The new foxes run toward people, jump on
the bed and nuzzle one another as well as their human caretakers. Such a
behavioral transformation was to some degree expected, since they were bred
from the tamest members of their groups.”
“Perhaps more intriguing, they also look more doglike,”
There is for Grice an implicature here. His example:
ii. This pillar box seems red to me. (The implicature is that
it isn’t).
“with floppy ears, wagging tails and piebald fur.”
“The work uses modern genomics to understand the genetics behind the foxes’
changes in personality and appearance. The results are not nearly as widely
known among scientists, not to mention the public, as they deserve to be.”
“The essay, however, is not only about dogs, or foxes. is an exploration of how
genes, evolution and then environment shape behaviour, and in a way that puts
paid simplistic arguments about nature versus nurture. It may serve —
particularly now — as a parable of the lessons that can emerge from unfettered
science, if we have the courage to let it unfold.”
Which brings us back to grices.
Accounts from the early 19th century suggest the grice was an aggressive animal
with small <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tusk> tusks, an arched back, and a
coat of stiff dark bristles over a fleece of wool. Highland examples were
described as "a small, thin-formed animal, with bristles standing up from nose
to tail...". Like other livestock in these areas, the grice was small and
hardy, able to survive the harsh environmental conditions. Highland grice
foraged for berries on <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorland> moorland.
Most Shetland <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crofts> crofts would have at
least one grice kept on grazing lands, but they would often roam across
adjacent farmland, rooting up crops and occasionally killing and eating newborn
lambs. According to geologist
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hibbert-Ware> Samuel Hibbert, who wrote
an account of the islands in 1822, although the grice was "small and scrawny",
its meat made "excellent hams" when cured. Islanders also made footballs from
the grice's bladders, and even windowpanes from their intestines, by stretching
the membrane over a wooden frame until it was sufficiently thin to allow light
to pass through. The animal's bristles were used as thread for sewing leather
and for making ropes. However, useful as the animals no doubt were, neighbours
were constantly grumbling about the behaviour of their neighbour's grice, and
the courts were empowered to confiscate particularly troublesome pigs, and to
impose "hefty fines" on their owners.
In the nineteenth century, landowners discouraged the keeping of these swine
(one agricultural writer commented "it is voracious in the extreme, and
excessively difficult to confine in pasture or to fatten: it is also
destructive and mischievous, and therefore ought gradually to be extirpated").
This, combined with the increasing import of other breeds from the Scottish
mainland, resulted in a dwindling grice population, and by the 1930s the breed
was extinct. The legacy of grice remains, however. The wild bulb
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squill> squill is known locally as "grice's
onions" because it was a favourite food of the swine.
In 2006 curators at the
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland_Museum_and_Archives> Shetland Museum
and Archives commissioned a <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxidermist>
taxidermist to re-create a grice from the stuffed body of an immature wild
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boar> boar. As no one alive had seen a grice,
the accuracy of the model relied on descriptions in "published sources ...
investigated artefact and archaeological findings".The model grice went on
public display in spring 2007.
Cheers,
Speranza
For the Grice Club.
