Owing
to its beautiful coat and bushy tail, which can be fiery red, steely
gray or snow-white, the fox has held a special place in our hearts since
time immemorial as a beautiful and mysterious woodland creature. These
22 pictures will make you fall in love with the fox all over again.
The
common red woodland fox that most of us know certainly is beautiful,
but this cunning creature has managed to adapt to diverse climates
throughout the world – the fennec fox of the Sahara desert and kit fox
in the southwest U.S. both sport larger ears that help them stay cool in
the desert, while the arctic fox has a thick and snow-white insulated
coat and small ears that help it retain its body heat.
The fox is
a member of the canidae family, which also includes dogs, wolves and
other similar animals. After 50 years of breeding experimentation in the
Soviet Union, they’ve also provided us with extraordinary insight into
the domestication process. Over several generations of selective
breeding (by choosing foxes with less fear of humans), Soviet scientist
Dmitry Belyaev was able to breed silver foxes that began to exhibit
domestic traits like floppy ears, tail wagging and spotted coats.
No
matter how each fox looks, however, their wide range ensures that they
have become elements of local folklore around the world. Various
cultures throughout Europe, Asia and Africa consider the fox to be a
cunning and sly creature that often plays the part of the trickster in
folktales and myths.
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