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Hecht already knew this history. But the show sparked a realization: Nobody had analyzed the foxes’ brains. Usually, humans breed goats or sheep or other domesticated animals for many traits, including temperament, size, and coat color, all of which might leave inadvertent marks on the mind. But differences between tame and regular fox noggins could be due only to selection on behavior—what Belyaev and Trut did. They’d stand out like a beacon, illuminating exactly which circuits or new neurochemistry turned a cringing, snarling little vixen into a sweetie. And they’d point the way to a deeper understanding of how evolution can remold a mind.“On the one hand, there’s the basic question of how brains evolve,” Hecht says. “And the more specific question, which is: What are the neural correlates of domestication? Surprisingly, we don’t know.” At least not yet.Whatever she found could also provide insight into a few emerging theories. One, articulated in 2005 by anthropologist Brian Hare and psychologist Michael Tomasello, proposes that back in the day, some unusually plucky wolves began hanging around humans to scrounge for scraps, giving rise to a less timid subpopulation. Without fear holding them back, these proto-pooches could repurpose their existing social skills to understand and communicate with us. They self-domesticated. That’s the essence of a dog, Hare and Tomasello argue: reduced fearfulness enabling advanced social cognition, that uncanny ability to read our minds. They called the idea “the domestication hypothesis.”

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White dog on blue backgroundo gain the trust of humans, dogs may have learned to become experts at conflict management over time. The VoorhesAs Chevy responds to his prompts, he’s representing not just himself, but also his breed. While we all have the sense that pit bulls and Pekingese and Irish wolfhounds have distinct personalities and skills, Hecht hopes to pin down those differences. It’s yet another way to explore how selective pressure—in this case, kennel-​club propagation—shapes a brain. In a recent paper, Hecht analyzed MRI scans from 33 breeds, finding that, for instance, a Weimaraner’s noggin has extra terrain devoted to visual processing, and that of a basset hound is primed to analyze smells.