A bit more information about foxes

Quest: To find images of dog breeds for the painting that I started and am waiting for to be dry.
Surprise joy: Also found a book specifically on foxes.

From this book (The World of Foxes by Rebeca L. Grambo - A Sierra Club book), in addition to finding a bunch of crazy cute photos of foxes playing, I have learned a few neat things about foxes.

One thing I hadn't noticed, but which now seems bluntly obvious, is that foxes look a lot like cats. ! Why might this be? an astute studier of evolution might ask, when they are supposed to be more related to dogs? (This reminds me of a photo I took in the mall where there are all these dog and cat stuffed animals together, that I think might apply to this painting idea I have too . . . Hmmm.) Well, as it turns out, foxes and cats are an example of convergent evolution, which is something I forgot existed, whereupon two relatively-genetically-unrelated animals begin to look like one another because of behavioral/lifestyle factors. In other words, the last ancestor cats and foxes shared was way a long time ago, and foxes branched off since then, but because they both pounce on small mammals and hunt at night etc. they ended up having similar physiological features.

For instance: Foxes have slightly longer back legs than front ones, so they maintain contact with the ground longer for jumping purposes. They have light, thin bones, and tufts of fur between their toes to make their footsteps extra soft (for sneaking purposes). They have vertical slits for pupils (like cats) which allows for them to more tightly close their pupils during the day, protecting their very sensitive retinas (optimized for night viewing).

Other interesting things about foxes is that they are solitary hunters (which you'd have to be if you are going to eat a mole . . . because you just can't group-kill a mole and then share it with 5 other foxes). However, they are very social in their family groups -- male and female will mate for at least a season, maybe longer, and stay together during that time, and then when kits are born, female foxes will nest together (usually related by kinship, like mothers and daughters or sisters or something) and help raise each others pups. The male will bring food for the female when the babies are very small, and then they will hunt together to bring back enough food for the kits, leaving it progressively further and further from the den to get them to venture out.

Also, foxes don't dig their own dens (though they do dig small holes to cache food). Instead, they use existing holes, from say a badger or groundhog.