I’ll try to find a good daily fox video for the next three or four days; I have at least two in line. This is a good one because it’s also a heartwarmer. It comes from The Dodo, where there isn’t much information. The kit got its head stuck in a can, and the nice man freed it. Let’s hope it found its mom afterwards.
It’s cries are plaintive and sad, but it comes for fusses after it’s freed.
Here’s a gif of the critical moment. What a cutie it is, even if it is related to the d*g! Look at that face!
h/t: Lauren
What kind of fox is this? While googling types of foxes, I came upon this cute illustration but it didn’t really help me out.
It’s a red. They can be gray or blackish as well as red, but all have the white tail-tip.
The red fox is said (Wikipedia) to be the most common species, and seems to be the most likely here, even though this guy is mostly grayish – the gray fox is a North American animal.
Well, of course, for that matter, so are we….
(For those too lazy to go to TimeTree: cat to either fox or d*g is ~55MYA. Fox to d*g is ~15MYA. Housecat to lions and jaguars and tigers is ~12MYA. Human to any of them is ~100MYA.)
b&
For those too skeptical to rely on TimeTree estimates, be aware that the fossil-calibrated ‘clock’ based on both molecular and morphological evidence is consistent with considerably younger dates. Models unduly influenced by a ‘constant-speedism’ assumption have a tendency to push vertebrate divergences far back beyond the ages of known relevant fossils.
I love the expression on its face after the can is removed, it looks so confused.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O1EgkoXA3fE, here’s the theme song for a Japanese movie about a fox family. Beautiful scenes and touching story, after so many years, I still like it. 🙂 just like the “Seinfeld”, if watch it again, I still laugh.
LOVE the look after the can is removed! “It’s all cool. Nobody saw that, right?”
I’d adopt it if it wasn’t going to grow into a vicious predator.
Probably right. But I had the thought that after about 30 generations, this guys offspring might turn into d*gs. With the right artificial selection, of course.
The Siberian fox-breeding experiments suggest that it could be a lot less than 30 generations.
I understood that dogs and foxes are completely different species (Dogs have 78 chromosomes, but red foxes have 38 chromosomes)and don’t cross. I wouldn’t expect a fox to ‘mutate’ into a dog in 30 generations or even at all.
The point of Belyaev’s … oh hang on things to do. Be back in a bit.
Belyaev’s work was aimed at trying to generate a more tractable “Siberian Fox” for the fur breeding industry. Evidently they didn’t take well to life in a cage, which affected the quality of the skin once they’d been peeled. Developing an animal with X number of chromosomes or Y number of legs wasn’t really on the agenda (would 6-legged pelts be better for making coats or not? [SHRUG]).
What he found, somewhat to his surprise, was that a whole swathe of “dog like” traits came along with the traits that he was artificially selecting for : shorter snouts, bigger eyes etc. In retrospect, probably he was getting a batch of related things that go with breeding an animal with an extended childhood, with less stress from taking food from a handler, instead of hunting for themselves. Probably slower to sexual maturity too.
A different way of thinking of it would be that Belyaev was selecting for a behaviour (range) – cage-living ability – rather than particularly for a specific set of genetic characteristics. So, finding that a batch of physical characteristics were selected with the behaviours that he was trying to breed for.
I was pondering to myself about how the behaviour repertoire of mammals seems much more flexible than for other classes of animals – or is that an artefact of one’s experience. Primates are intensely social animals – except for orangutangs ; felines are solitary animals – except for lions (and to a lesser degree, domestic mogs ; canines are obligate carnivores – except for dogs which have developed starch-digesting genes. And behaviours seem to be something which can change with pretty small amounts of genetic change, but large consequences. I suppose you could liken it to the development of the computer, from Jaquard loom with physical cards for “software”, through the (unbuilt) Difference Engine, to firstly analogue computers, then to programmable digital computers and most recently to re-programmable FPGA arrays where the very nature of the hardware is under the control of the software.
And now I’m back onto an old trope of mine where cultural evolution – including things like the behavioural flexibility of domesticated animals can be so much faster than evolution of “the hardware”, because with cultural changes you really can have inheritance of derived characters, as behaviours are passed on vertically (parent to offspring) and horizontally (between members of a social group).
I think I’m going to go back and listen to the last few chapters of “2001 – A Space Odyssey” yet again. Or maybe that’s why I’m thinking about changing modes of evolution.
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Too cute!
Yes, but they are very feline canines!
I was brought up to ALWAYS crush empty tin cans flat and to cut the end piece of the lid completely off.
This is EXACTLY why we did that.
(These days I put empty cans through the dishwasher too, so that there’s no debris left to attract animal life to the recycling bucket
I love that summer is coming to an end in England and this guy’s legs are still white as snow!
On a different note, this is the kind of action we would prefer to see when we hear an English accent on a video.