One is man’s best friend, the other is considered a pest in many countries says Sheena Harvey. But are their starkly different positions in a world dominated by humans justified? Just how similar are dogs and foxes?
Are dogs and foxes related?
Dogs and foxes are both members of the Canidae family of animals, according to the universally recognised classification of all living things draw up by Swedish biologist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus in 1758. But that does not make them close relatives as Linnaeus further divided Canidae into Canis, to cover dogs, wolves and jackals, and Vulpes that refers to foxes.
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Of course, Linnaeus did not have the benefit of DNA profiling. But basing his classification system on close observation of the physical aspects and behaviours of animals and plants, in particular their reproduction, gave a solid foundation that modern techniques have refined.
In all cases, the lifestyles of dogs and foxes and their relationships with humans set them apart from each.
What makes a dog a dog?
Canis familiaris was the earliest domesticated animal in the world. The first dogs were descendants of a species of now-extinct grey wolves in northern Europe. These animals were tamed and then deliberately bred to become useful companions to hunter-gatherers living 14,000 years ago.
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These wolf-dogs helped their human owners to hunt for food before farming became the main way of life, and later they were adapted to serve as herders, guardians and companions.
Gradually, domesticated dogs spread across the globe, wherever humans settled. They were eventually even present in Antarctica, where they were taken to pull sleds. There are feral dogs in Africa and Asia and dingoes in Australia, but these are descended from domesticated dogs that escaped or were released into the wild.
The African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) are a distinct species, related but different to domestic dogs, in the same way that jackals and Asian dholes are separate species.
Thanks to selective reproduction designed to adapt them to fulfil different roles, dogs have evolved to take on many shapes and sizes. There are now thought to be around 450 distinct dog types in the world. These are referred to as breeds, because the species remains broadly the same regardless of the type of dog.
Dogs’ heads vary between narrow and broad, with pointy or floppy ears. Their noses can be elongated or flattened, their legs and tails long or short. There are shaggy and short-haired breeds, with fur in solid shades of brown, black and white, or patterned with stripes and spots, and there are even some that are hairless.
What makes a fox a fox?
Foxes are largely wild animals. They have never been domesticated to any degree, and although there are isolated stories of foxes kept as pets, they have largely resisted being tamed and therefore physically adapted to any useful human purpose. As they are notable predators, this puts them in opposition to humans in many places and they have long been considered pests by farmers and livestock managers.
Physically, foxes remain as they have been over millennia: small- to medium-sized mammals, with a flattened skull, triangular face, pointy ears that stick upwards from the head, a slim, pointed snout and a long, bushy tail. Their coats vary in density depending on the region where they live and can be coloured red, brown, black or white, often with paler underbellies, but they have never developed stripes or spots.
There are 12 species of true foxes in the Vulpes category, which divide into numerous subspecies. They live wild on every continent of the world, bar Antarctica, where they have evolved naturally over thousands of years to cope with the climactic conditions and food sources present in their habitats.
For example, an Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) has very small ears and very dense, multi-layered white fur to keep it warm and camouflaged in deep snow and fur on the soles of its feet to protect and grip on ice. The fennec fox (Vulpes zerda), by contrast, has enormous ears to help shed heat in its North African environment and a beige coat to blend into the desert sands. The fur on the soles of its paws is there to protect it from the searingly hot ground.
Red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) in Europe have become as close to humans as a wild animal is willing to be, lately settling in numbers in urban areas where they profit from scavenging our rubbish. Another characteristic that makes them very unpopular.
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Where else are the differences between dogs and foxes?
There are quite a number of characteristics that set the two Canidae members apart.
Although some fox species cohabit in small groups, they are mostly solitary creatures. Dogs are pack animals and happiest when surrounded by an extended, hierarchical family group as their wolf ancestors would have been. This pack instinct is extended to their human families.
Dogs will treat their owners as their pack and defer to the person they regard as the pack leader. The closeness has led to an ability to understand and communicate with humans to the limits of their physical ability.
Foxes are exclusively carnivorous, but they can survive on a varied meat diet of mammals, birds, insects, shellfish and invertebrates. Dogs are omnivores, with a preference for meat but an ability to digest and derive nutrition from plant material, and especially starch, which would not sustain a fox.
When hunting, foxes have a distinct style that involves pouncing on their prey from a place of concealment, landing on them with great force, gripping the back of their necks and shaking vigorously to kill them.
Dogs are more inclined to chase down their prey in the open and kill with a bite to the throat that crushes the windpipe and ruptures major blood vessels.
Although both walk on their toes, foxes have partially retractable claws, where those of dogs are fixed. The other striking difference to other members of the Canis family is that dogs can have an erect tail, a trait not found in wolves or foxes.
Lastly, modern scientific analysis has revealed that dogs and foxes are quite differentgenetically. So although some dog breeds look very like foxes – the Shiba Inu, for instance, and various other breeds of Spitz, as well as the Akita, Welsh Corgi, Samoyed, Pomeranian and even long-haired Chihuahua – these are appearances only. Dogs are not close cousins of the Vulpes branch of the Canidae family.
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