It’s no secret that I have a bit of infatuation the canids in the genus Urocyon. Not only are they considered the most basal form of extant canid, it is very likely that there are multiple cryptic species in the genus that need more molecular and morphological investigations to ascertain.
These canids are unique among North American dogs in that they are great tree climbers. Indeed, they are the most arboreal of all dogs. While the raccoon dogs of the Old World certainly do climb with their long hooked claws, the gray foxes take to the trees as readily as cats do.
A few years ago, I came across these images of some Southwestern gray foxes climbing in trees that were adorned with skeletons. I initially thought they had been placed in these trees to attract the foxes to the trail camera, and I pretty much ignored them.
But today, I was snooping around the web in search of the latest stories on gray foxes, and I came across the full story of these images. It turns out that the gray foxes of the Sonoran Desert often cache prey and scavenged food items in trees to keep them safe from coyotes. They use these “skeleton trees” as places where the whole family group gets together to groom and bond and rearrange their caches.
The most unusual photo from the series shows a gray fox standing on a branch where it has placed a dead collared peccary (javelina) “piglet.” The adults of this species are so much larger and so much more aggressive than any gray fox, and I cannot help but wonder how the gray fox managed to catch such a trophy. It had to have taken some guts if the fox caught it on the run, but the researcher who got these photos claims that the foxes do trail peccaries in hopes of snatching a little one.
Lots of research goes into wolves and coyotes. They are the charismatic canids of North America, and both North American and Old World red foxes have also been extensively studied.
But gray foxes don’t get that same billing, and that is pretty sad. They are not like the short-eared dog of South America, where they intentionally live as far from human settlements as possible and are quite difficult to study. Gray foxes are pretty common in North America, if you live south of Canada and outside of the Northern Rockies and the Northern Great Plains of the United States.
I think the name has something to do with it. The name “gray fox” has a connotation with something drab and bland, while “red fox” has a spicier feel.
One implication of the recent finding of the potential existence of two species of gray fox on the North America mainland is that the proposed Western species might derive from an Irvingintonian Urocyon that is not ancestral to the proposed Eastern species.
This analysis was derived from a limited mitochondrial DNA analysis and should be taken with a grain of salt, but it seems likely that at least two species really do exist on this continent. More work from the full genome needs to be performed, and my guess is this research is currently being performed. The article might be out in peer-review right now, and one day, we’ll know for sure.
But there is something mysterious about these little canids. They are move like little cat-dogs, and in the Southwest, at least, they are little dog-leopards, caching their prey in trees where the coyotes can’t go.
The more we know about these lesser dogs, the more they intrigue me. Indeed, the whole lesser parts of Carnivora have me a bit enthralled. The tiger is largely known, as is the wolf, but the mysteries lie with the Eastern spotted skunk in the High Alleghenies of West Virginia, with the long-tailed weasels of canyon lands of New Mexico, and with the bat-eared foxes of the Kalahari.
So now, we must consider the meek and the mild and drab. We must now come to know them, to let their mysteries be revealed in all their glory. We will be shocked, I’m sure
They are amazing. I feel they are terribly unappreciated and under studied.
First wild canid I ever saw, in an abandoned old field in the city. We still see them in the city, very early in the morning. My favorite for sure!
I have at least one resident gray fox and one resident red fox that frequently show up on my trail cam behind the house. It’s interesting how these two foxes both occupy the same space but seem to time their nightly rounds so that they come through at least an hour apart (and obviously both foxes seem to give the monster raccoons and the occasional coyote that appear a wide berth as well). In all my photos, I only have *one* which might depict both foxes in the frame at the same time. The gray is in the background, while what *looks* like it might be the red is in the foreground, however it is very obscured by a deer ribcage and it might not be a red fox after all. (The nighttime images are black and white of course so no way of determining color). In a lot of the old wildlife literature I used to read it seemed to be frequently repeated that gray foxes are more aggressive than reds and tend to prevail in interspecific conflicts with them due to this reason, and will sometimes drive red foxes out of areas because of it. I wonder if that is indeed the case or some sort of zoological “meme” just kept getting repeated over the years. Grays and reds have shared the territory behind my house for at least two years now and they seem to do it via mutual avoidance. I wonder if arboreal carcass-caching behavior is known to occur in temperate areas, I’ll have to keep a lookout for “skeleton trees” around here.
They tend to be antagonistic toward each other, with the red fox actually being dominated by the gray. However, if they are living where there are abundant food resources, I bet there could be a detente. There aren’t many studies on red foxes and gray foxes living near homes.
Considering I have the camera only 35yards behind my house, in a suburban neighborhood, I’ve gotten pics of a surprising variety of scavengers back there.
Besides the foxes and the raccoons, which are regulars, I get periodic coyote photos (one of my favorite animals) and last year also had a bobcat and a fisher show up. The most surprising thing this year has been the hundreds of photos of a scavenging barred owl.
Currently the ribcage is pretty well picked clean so I’ll need a new carcass if I want to keep getting pics though.
You should put these on a blog. I used to do a lot of camera trapping over the years for material here
I dunno if I have the work ethic to run a blog. I was briefly sharing my pics in a “Maine Trailcam Photos and Videos” group on Facebook but everytime someone posted a pic or video of a coyote there was a deluge of “Shoot the bastard” and “heh heh time to thin out the pack” comments. It got tiresome and I quit the group. My GF says the Maine wildlife photography FB group she’s in is the same way.
If I’m not mistaken the Channel Islands fox were transplanted there by Californian Native Americans and they’re considered to be basal canines similar to raccoon dogs. So,there’s potential for domestication. I wonder how closely related the grey fox is to the black-backed and side-striped jackals.
So we do have evidence that Channel Islands foxes were brought there by people during the Holocene (7,000ish-9,000ish years ago). They are even more divergent from the rest of the dog family than raccoon dogs are. They are the most basal and divergent canid lineage still in existence.
As for domestication, well, I can easily buy pet foxes in my state, both red and gray. I have a domestic red fox (cross phase), and he is very far down the road to domestication, much easier to keep and handle than certain primitive dogs. But I’ve been told that gray foxes are even naturally more tame than these red foxes that have been selected for tameness, and it’s not just the Belyaev foxes that have been selected for tameness. In the Midwest, there are lots of breeders of tame red foxes. In most Midwestern states, pet foxes are not much more regulated than domestic dogs are.