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Speaker 7: Oh hey, it's the guy who didn't even look at
Speaker 7: your receipt before dragging a highlighter over it. Ali word here,
Speaker 7: it is here. It is the Fox episode. Waited years
Speaker 7: for this and it was absolutely totally different than I expected.
Speaker 7: Join me. So we're going to address the etymology of
Speaker 7: the ology in a bit. But I do want you
Speaker 7: to know that in researching this, Google helpfully redirected me
Speaker 7: to the search results for urology, and then proctology, and
Speaker 7: then once again euro gynecology and I scoffed, but honestly eurosinology.
Speaker 7: It kind of involves a bit of each of those.
Speaker 7: Stick around. But this expert is just one of my
Speaker 7: favorite kinds. His study species is just woven into his
Speaker 7: every day life and his dreams and his identity. I
Speaker 7: love all of it. And he's a retired English teacher
Speaker 7: this Fox guy, who's known as the Fox Guy and
Speaker 7: is very gifted with narrative abilities like your favorite fireside storyteller.
Speaker 7: He's even written a book, twenty twenty two's The Road
Speaker 7: to Fox Hollow, which is beautifully written, and he's contributed
Speaker 7: to Canan's of the World, published by Princeton University Press.
Speaker 7: He's been an associate director of the North Santa Clara
Speaker 7: Resource Conservation District, and he co founded the Urban Wildlife
Speaker 7: Research Project, which has accomplished rigorous field research, has this
Speaker 7: archive of data. Beth Pratt of our p twenty two episode,
Speaker 7: has called him the Jane Goodall of the Gray Fox,
Speaker 7: and by the end of the episode, You're never going
Speaker 7: to look at Fox as the same. This is like
Speaker 7: showing you a new color you never knew existed, or
Speaker 7: a flavor of cake. They've been hiding in the back
Speaker 7: and we're going to get to it. But first quick
Speaker 7: thank you to all the patrons who submitted questions for
Speaker 7: this episode. Thank you to everyone wearing ologies merch from
Speaker 7: all Gesmarch dot com. Also side note, we have smologies
Speaker 7: which are g rated shorter kid friendly episodes and those
Speaker 7: you can find anywhere you get your podcasts. It's called smologies.
Speaker 7: We linked them in the show notes too, And thank
Speaker 7: you to everyone who leaves reviews, which helped the show
Speaker 7: so much. I read them all, and I prove it
Speaker 7: with my mouth by reading one such as this recent
Speaker 7: one from right Away, who wrote, I find myself completely
Speaker 7: lost in episodes that I thought i'd want to skip.
Speaker 7: I mean, how can a show about trees or basket
Speaker 7: weaving be fascinating? But they are? Right away. We just
Speaker 7: have really good guests. Y'all are gonna love this one.
Speaker 7: Curl up, open your huge ears for facts about fuzzy foxes,
Speaker 7: baby names, parental strategies, where they live, what they inherit,
Speaker 7: how to observe foxes, How tiny foxes wound up on islands,
Speaker 7: which ones need conservation, how to help the foxes tech foxes,
Speaker 7: why a fox on the couch is worth thousands in
Speaker 7: the bush, if foxes eat leftovers? And how your dog
Speaker 7: can help save their lives? Plus what do they smell like?
Speaker 7: And at long last, what do they say with gray fox?
Speaker 7: Behavioral expert, researcher, conservationist, author, and euroscinologist Bill like them?
Speaker 8: Okay, Bill like them?
Speaker 9: Cool?
Speaker 4: Yeah? And I just wanted to make a point that
Speaker 4: my specialty is the gray fox. Yes, and it's the
Speaker 4: most unique fox of all of them.
Speaker 7: Is it the best fox?
Speaker 4: Oh? I wouldn't say it is exactly the best fox,
Speaker 4: but it's the most unique fox. I'll put it that way.
Speaker 4: It is the base what we call the basal canid.
Speaker 4: It's the root of all other canids that exist in
Speaker 4: the world. So it's older, genetically older than a wolf,
Speaker 4: a jackal. You name the canid on the planet, gray fox?
Speaker 4: Is it?
Speaker 7: Really? I did not know that, and that is very exciting. Now,
Speaker 7: first off, a fox, are they more like dogs or cats?
Speaker 4: They're more like cats. I sometimes call them the canine
Speaker 4: that acts like a feline. Okay, because they do. They
Speaker 4: have a lot of characteristics. They are feline, and so.
Speaker 7: What about them is cat like? Is it how they
Speaker 7: stalk their prey?
Speaker 4: It's part of that, but it's also the manner in
Speaker 4: which they sip. They also climb trees just like a
Speaker 4: cat would. Oh, the way they use their ears is
Speaker 4: cat like.
Speaker 7: And then what about them is very doglike.
Speaker 4: Only probably appearance, really, yeah, because they just reflect that
Speaker 4: cat like behavior.
Speaker 7: You know, we have domesticated dogs and cats, but very
Speaker 7: few people on earth have pet foxes. Why do you
Speaker 7: think that is? They're so cute?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, in England more people have foxes for pets
Speaker 4: as far as I can tell, than we do over here.
Speaker 4: My attitude is this that they are in fact meant
Speaker 4: to be in the wild, not to be captive in
Speaker 4: your home.
Speaker 7: So a pet fox, no, First off, they tend to
Speaker 7: be a bit destructive indoors, and they need raw meat
Speaker 7: and mental stimulation and a lot of physical activity, and
Speaker 7: it's illegal in most states in the US. Hey are
Speaker 7: you a certified wildlife rehabber? And the fox can't be released? Maybe,
Speaker 7: but they can never fully be potty trained. And if
Speaker 7: pet foxes have like a favorite activity, it's peeing on
Speaker 7: stuff so much. P What do foxes smell like? I've
Speaker 7: heard that they're musky, very musky. This is true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, they are. They reflect their scat. Oh, and
Speaker 4: their scat is really there's a whole story behind what
Speaker 4: they do and how they use their scat and so forth.
Speaker 4: It's pretty remarkable how they use it.
Speaker 7: It might be like a little too early in the
Speaker 7: episode to dive right into what foxes do with their business,
Speaker 7: And I mean, maybe we should skip that or what
Speaker 7: do they do? I'm all yours.
Speaker 4: Oh well, what they do is they take their feces
Speaker 4: and they mark territory, so they will defecate in areas
Speaker 4: where they want to make it known to other animals
Speaker 4: that they own this territory. So if it's another fox
Speaker 4: that comes into the area trespasser, let's say, the pair
Speaker 4: of foxes that claims the territory will fight off another
Speaker 4: any other fox that comes into the area, the trespasses
Speaker 4: onto their territory, and eventually they will chase that trespasser
Speaker 4: out of their territory. And that happens over and over again.
Speaker 4: But fairly recently, like a year and a half ago,
Speaker 4: I had gray foxes occupying a territory in my study
Speaker 4: area and a red fox came rolling into the area,
Speaker 4: and the red fox and the gray foxes were in conflict,
Speaker 4: and the end result of that was what I call
Speaker 4: the scat wars because what happened. What happened was that
Speaker 4: by the way I name the foxes, I give them
Speaker 4: personal names. I don't do this scientific bit because like
Speaker 4: Jane Goodall said, you don't want you get to know them.
Speaker 4: You can't dub them with a GF, you know, forty two,
Speaker 4: whatever it might be, you know, so I give him names.
Speaker 4: And this one gray fox I call Limos, and that
Speaker 4: means long neck in Greek, because he had kind of
Speaker 4: an extended neck. You know, that's kind of the way
Speaker 4: I identify them. Anyway, he was marking, marking, marking, and
Speaker 4: telling with his scat this red fox to get out.
Speaker 4: And what the red fox would do would come over
Speaker 4: to where he had defecated and defecate on top of it.
Speaker 4: And it was pile on pile on, pile.
Speaker 7: On file, like a Jenga tower.
Speaker 4: And finally, finally the red fox is left. And it
Speaker 4: was about a year later that both of the gray
Speaker 4: foxes died. We have a problem out here with canine
Speaker 4: distemper and it's deadly, deadly, deadly to foxes and raccoons
Speaker 4: and a couple of other mammals that live nearby. And anyway,
Speaker 4: after they died, then the red foxes came back in.
Speaker 4: And that's now what I'm monitoring. I'm monitoring the red
Speaker 4: foxes instead of the gray foxes.
Speaker 7: And just briefly, according to the twenty twenty three study,
Speaker 7: canine distemper virus infection in the free living wild canines.
Speaker 7: This potentially fatal malady is related to the human measles virus,
Speaker 7: and it can affect domesticated dogs, of course, but also
Speaker 7: wildlife like foxes, coyotes, wolves, skunks, raccoons, river otters, weasels, badgers,
Speaker 7: even ferrets. And at room temperature the virus can't last
Speaker 7: that long, like less than a day, but at colder
Speaker 7: temperatures it can live quite a bit longer, and infected
Speaker 7: animals can shed it for months through p and other
Speaker 7: things coming out of their bodies. And of course, when
Speaker 7: there is habitat loss and a lot of animals cramped densely,
Speaker 7: it spreads much more quickly. As someone who studies gray foxes,
Speaker 7: does that bum you out that it's now a red
Speaker 7: fox territory? Are you like, that's not my species?
Speaker 4: That's a great question. I'm really interested in seeing how
Speaker 4: different these red foxes might be from the gray foxes,
Speaker 4: and we've just started that part of the documentation of
Speaker 4: the red foxes. I'm an ethologist, okay, And as an
Speaker 4: ethologist you have to have a great deal of patience.
Speaker 7: Ethology is a study of behavior, just a side notoe.
Speaker 4: And you also need to have the ability to observe
Speaker 4: in detail. So if you observe in detail and document directly,
Speaker 4: then you can build up a backlog of behavior.
Speaker 7: How long have you been a vulpanologist? How long have
Speaker 7: you been hanging out in the field? And look at it? Foxes?
Speaker 4: Uh, fox Foxology, that's what we'll call it.
Speaker 7: Foxology. It's not vulpanology.
Speaker 4: Oh, because well vulte volte is the mainline of the
Speaker 4: fox classification. Okay, but gray fox doesn't fit in there. No,
Speaker 4: gray fox is You're a siam No not what?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I didn't realize that. Well, then let's go back.
Speaker 7: Let's talk a little bit about these different not only species,
Speaker 7: but actual genus of foxes. Because foxology pulled up mostly
Speaker 7: websites selling nail polish or fishnet body suits, we're kind
Speaker 7: of jerry rigging a new ology here, eurosinology, just for
Speaker 7: gray foxes. I don't want to hear a word of
Speaker 7: objection to that just because it's never been used, Because
Speaker 7: by the end of the episode, you're going to be like, yes,
Speaker 7: gray foxes deserve anology. I love them and they are special.
Speaker 7: So the gray fox predates all of these other canids.
Speaker 7: How many types of foxes are there though, I mean,
Speaker 7: I've heard of arctic foxes, red foxes.
Speaker 4: How many we got, well, it depends on who you're
Speaker 4: talking to. There are occtentsively twenty four, okay, and some
Speaker 4: of those twenty four are very rare and live in
Speaker 4: other parts of the world. And then there are overlaps.
Speaker 4: The Asian raccoon dog oh is considered in sort of
Speaker 4: in the fox lane, and the bat aired fox of
Speaker 4: Africa is also a part of that, and those two
Speaker 4: are the only two other canids that can climb trees.
Speaker 7: So yes, this checks out. Red foxes in the genus
Speaker 7: full paste are the most common, and other Vulpecee species
Speaker 7: include the Arctic fox and the kit fox, the huge eared,
Speaker 7: sandy colored fenick fox, the cape fox, and of course
Speaker 7: the red fox, which is fulpace full pase now. Not
Speaker 7: in the vulpace bucket is that bat eared fox of
Speaker 7: the African savannahs, which looks like a jackal and it
Speaker 7: eats termites, but it's in its own genus autocion now.
Speaker 7: Also not a Volpasee is our newly beloved gray fox.
Speaker 7: It's one of just two species in that genus, and
Speaker 7: its full name Eurocion scenario. Argentis means silver dogtail. It's
Speaker 7: got a nice long tail. And the gray fox, it
Speaker 7: used to be the most prevalent fox in precolonized North America,
Speaker 7: but like so many things being disrupted, it's been edged
Speaker 7: out by the larger red fox. Just in case you
Speaker 7: want to root for an underdog, gray fox is an
Speaker 7: underfox and the gray fox. How big about is the
Speaker 7: gray fox?
Speaker 4: Oh, it's like a small dog. Weighs about anywhere from
Speaker 4: probably eight nine pounds on the slim side up to
Speaker 4: about fifteen When you see them, see the small ones
Speaker 4: out in the field out there next to some of
Speaker 4: the bigger ones. There's a whale of a difference in
Speaker 4: there in size wise. But the gray fox tends to
Speaker 4: stay in the brush a lot. They're what I call
Speaker 4: bush dogs. And the red fox, on the other hand,
Speaker 4: is a field dog. Oh and so the gray fox
Speaker 4: has short, stubby legs and the red fox has long
Speaker 4: legs for the field.
Speaker 7: I've seen that.
Speaker 4: Movement, you know, through grasses and things like that.
Speaker 7: Is that why people think of the red fox more
Speaker 7: when they think of a fox, because we just aren't
Speaker 7: seeing these bush dogs.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right, exactly.
Speaker 7: I've only seen gray fox I think once. They live
Speaker 7: on Catalina as well. Right, just a quick side note,
Speaker 7: So Catalina is one of the Channel islands off the
Speaker 7: coast of southern California, and I went to college in
Speaker 7: Santa Barbara. I lived there for months before I realized like, oh,
Speaker 7: those are islands out in the ocean. Those are islands
Speaker 7: right there. And the only other fox, by the way,
Speaker 7: in the gray foxes, genus Heurocion, is the little island
Speaker 7: fox and it's tiny. It weighs in it just like
Speaker 7: four or five pounds. Ourchaeologists think it's only been on
Speaker 7: those islands for about six thousand years, and the National
Speaker 7: Park Service notes that the indigenous Tchumash revered those foxes
Speaker 7: as sacred and thought that they helped usher in dreams.
Speaker 7: And I personally would follow an island fox into the beyond.
Speaker 7: I couldn't help myself. Now, what about bill?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, those are the small one, the little ones.
Speaker 4: And there's still a debate on how they ever got there.
Speaker 7: I was wondering that because it's a I had to
Speaker 7: take a ferry for like an hour and a half,
Speaker 7: so I don't know how they got on that's a
Speaker 7: lot of swimming.
Speaker 4: Can they swim well? Some people say that the native
Speaker 4: people living on the mainland exported them out to the
Speaker 4: islands in their travels way before the white man ever
Speaker 4: got here.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Some others say no, it was when the two land masses,
Speaker 4: when the islands were part of the mainland and broke
Speaker 4: off millions of years ago, that it took them along
Speaker 4: with it.
Speaker 7: How did you get down the path of foxes or
Speaker 7: up the tree of foxes?
Speaker 4: Whoa you want to hear a story?
Speaker 7: Yes, of course, that's why I'm here.
Speaker 4: Well, like around two thousand and seven or so, my
Speaker 4: doctor said to me, he said, you know, Bill, if
Speaker 4: you would get out and walk for a let's say,
Speaker 4: half an hour to an hour every day, it'll help
Speaker 4: you a lot physically. So I took him up on
Speaker 4: that offer. And I had always been interested in birds, okay,
Speaker 4: So as a fledgling burger, I got myself a DSLR
Speaker 4: camera and I went out into Bixby Park here near
Speaker 4: in Palo Alto, and I started taking photos of birds
Speaker 4: and I got to be fairly good, and one of
Speaker 4: my favorite favorite ones was the bullocks oriol Okay, and
Speaker 4: it's a it's a pretty bird. And I knew a
Speaker 4: tree down this old dirt road where they were hanging out.
Speaker 4: So one morning I'm walking down that road and I
Speaker 4: come around to bend and whoa ahead of me? Up
Speaker 4: there it is this fox sitting next to the road.
Speaker 4: And I knew it was a fox, but I had
Speaker 4: no idea what kind of a fox it was. I
Speaker 4: was zero, okay when it comes to knowing anything about them.
Speaker 4: And this was in two thousand and nine. So I
Speaker 4: started taking photos, walking closer and closer and closer, and
Speaker 4: there was a steel gate across the road, and so
Speaker 4: that little fox was sitting right on the other side
Speaker 4: of that gate. So when I went around the corner
Speaker 4: of that gate, that little fox just stood up and casually,
Speaker 4: I mean casually walked back into the brush.
Speaker 7: I said, whoa, So Bill had this brush with the
Speaker 7: cat sized bush dogs.
Speaker 4: And so the next day I come back taking a
Speaker 4: look to see if I could find a fox, you know,
Speaker 4: in the bushes and wherever. Yeah, nothing really, the second day, nothing.
Speaker 4: The third day, I'm coming along that same road in
Speaker 4: that same area and I'm looking back in the brush
Speaker 4: and everything, and what did I see? I saw three
Speaker 4: young foxes under the edge of the brush watching me
Speaker 4: come up the road.
Speaker 7: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Okay, so I'm saying to myself, oh oh, I discovered
Speaker 4: a family. Not just one fox, there's a whole family here.
Speaker 7: Just a side note. This was in two thousand and
Speaker 7: nine and at the time Bill was nearly seventy years old.
Speaker 7: Let me math this out for you. Bill is eighty
Speaker 7: five people. I didn't find out until after the interview,
Speaker 7: and I thought he was like maybe sixty. He's eighty
Speaker 7: five and he's still out doing field work. So take
Speaker 7: his doctor's advice. Walk thirty minutes a day if you can,
Speaker 7: maybe slide a post a notepad in your pocket. You
Speaker 7: see some frolicking animals. But yeah, So on this day
Speaker 7: in two thousand and nine, Bill saw this gaggle of
Speaker 7: foxes who kind of looked at him quizzically.
Speaker 4: I sat down on the other side of the road,
Speaker 4: and I had a posted pad in my pocket, and
Speaker 4: I just started jotting down little things about what they
Speaker 4: were doing over there in that brush, you know, And
Speaker 4: they were curious about me, And you know, what's this
Speaker 4: human doing over there on the other side of the road.
Speaker 4: You know, may have been what they were thinking, And
Speaker 4: then I came back day after day after day, and
Speaker 4: on one of those days the adults were out. One
Speaker 4: of the adults was on up the roadways, and I
Speaker 4: was between her and her little family back in the bush. Oh,
Speaker 4: and she comes up to the gate and she gets
Speaker 4: down on her belly and she's looking at me, and
Speaker 4: then she barks. I'd never heard a fox bark in
Speaker 4: all my life.
Speaker 7: Me neither.
Speaker 4: And she barks several times in order. And that's the
Speaker 4: only time in all of the years that I've been
Speaker 4: doing this study that I was afraid of a fox.
Speaker 7: What did it sound like?
Speaker 4: Like somebody with laryngitis. I can imitate a little bit,
Speaker 4: a little bit of it, but not with the velocity
Speaker 4: that they do it. I'll show you. Okay, it goes
Speaker 4: something like this, right, that's sort of the sound of
Speaker 4: a gray.
Speaker 7: Fox, really but rasppier.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have more laryngitis.
Speaker 9: Wow.
Speaker 7: I didn't know that they did that. Yeah, So the
Speaker 7: call of the gray foxox is apparently like if a
Speaker 7: cocker spaniel smoked a packa day of Marlboro Reds and
Speaker 7: has never slept with a TV off. I picture a
Speaker 7: dog stumbling out of a casino and coughing while a
Speaker 7: gray fox is hiding in nearby shrubbery and looks up
Speaker 7: from a Sunday Crossword because they thought someone called their name.
Speaker 7: But gray foxes can also sound kind of like a
Speaker 7: squeaky toy or a whistle, and according to one regional
Speaker 7: field guide in the Northeast, gray foxes communicate through this
Speaker 7: variety of vocalizations, including growls and barks and wines and
Speaker 7: whimpers and squeals and yips and yaps, and the babies
Speaker 7: are on the yip yappier side. I guess before their
Speaker 7: voices developed their signature gravelly patina. I had no idea.
Speaker 7: Is that mostly just a gray fox or is that
Speaker 7: kind of just that is what the fox says.
Speaker 4: The red foxes have a different tone to their bark,
Speaker 4: but it it's very similar.
Speaker 7: Oh, I had no idea. I didn't even know that
Speaker 7: they did much vocalizing. So she's she's on her belly
Speaker 7: barking at you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's barking at me, and I'm worried. I'm worried
Speaker 4: she's going to come charging over and bite my leg.
Speaker 4: And I wanted to find a stick or something like
Speaker 4: that to defend myself, you know, but there wasn't anything around,
Speaker 4: and so what happened was that she stood up and
Speaker 4: decided to run past me. Okay, and that's what she did.
Speaker 4: She just fast, as you can believe, just a flash boom,
Speaker 4: and she's into the brush with her kids. And as
Speaker 4: I observed these foxes over time, it just so happened
Speaker 4: that they began to not only take on their own personalities,
Speaker 4: but I began to see that they had an emotional
Speaker 4: life and a cognitive life, which I didn't know before.
Speaker 7: Yeah. So Bill began to go out and watch them
Speaker 7: every day, shotting notes on his post it pat in
Speaker 7: his pocket and taking pictures and video and working with
Speaker 7: local ecologists to gather data. And then one day, about
Speaker 7: four years into it, he's.
Speaker 4: A partner of mine, Greg and I had bought a
Speaker 4: couple of trail cameras and I was going to check
Speaker 4: the SD cards and the trail cameras. But I had
Speaker 4: to go a long way around to get to where
Speaker 4: it was back in the woods. This little fox knew
Speaker 4: where I was going and beat me there. You met
Speaker 4: me there at the trail camera. And when I saw that,
Speaker 4: I thought that little fox anticipated where I was going.
Speaker 4: That means that they have some sense of future oh okay,
Speaker 4: and they have some sense of being able to think
Speaker 4: m And that changed the whole picture of my relationship
Speaker 4: with the foxes.
Speaker 7: Just a side note. This ability is called extended consciousness,
Speaker 7: and in twenty twenty four a group of biologists and
Speaker 7: philosophers highly regarded acknowledged via something called the New York
Speaker 7: Declaration on Animal Consciousness that first, there's a strong scientific
Speaker 7: support for attributions of conscious experience to other mammals and
Speaker 7: to birds. And second, the empirical evidence indicates at least
Speaker 7: a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates, including reptiles, amphibians, fish,
Speaker 7: and many invertebrates, including, at a minimum, they write, cephalopod mollusks,
Speaker 7: decopod crustaceans, and insects. They also said that when there's
Speaker 7: a realistic possibility of conscious experience in an animal, it's
Speaker 7: irresponsible to ignore that possibility in decisions affecting the animal,
Speaker 7: and that we should consider welfare risks of animals. So
Speaker 7: that little gray fox may have thought, I'm going to
Speaker 7: see what this ape in pants is up to. The
Speaker 7: sucker can't even climb a tree, or eat a row
Speaker 7: chet punk sad wow. And so they anticipated that they
Speaker 7: met you there. Did do you think they wanted to
Speaker 7: keep tabs on you as a threat or do you
Speaker 7: think it was curiosity and they just knew, Oh this
Speaker 7: guy's fine, but what's he doing back to his camera
Speaker 7: he always goes to.
Speaker 4: It was the curiosity quotient I sometimes called it is
Speaker 4: a high ten way up there. Really compared with other
Speaker 4: raccoons are about seven on such a scale as that,
Speaker 4: but the curiosity level. And so when they got comfortable
Speaker 4: with me being around and sitting across the road taking
Speaker 4: those notes, I was no longer a threat and they
Speaker 4: got that they weren't afraid of me. You know. I
Speaker 4: was one of the landscapes, so to speak. So that's
Speaker 4: where that little fox came in. He was comfort with
Speaker 4: me already and anticipated where I was going.
Speaker 7: And how big of a social structure do they have?
Speaker 7: Do they live usually with solitary lives plus their family
Speaker 7: or do they couple off or do they live in
Speaker 7: kind of like a pack?
Speaker 4: They are not a pack, okay. First, they are a
Speaker 4: family unit okay, And they have mom and dad Fox
Speaker 4: raised the young together and they're in a monogamous pair
Speaker 4: monogamy to an extent. Oh well, do tell the female
Speaker 4: is polyandrous?
Speaker 7: Oh good for her.
Speaker 4: And it's been suggested that they are polyandrous. That adds
Speaker 4: to their viability, survivability, and so forth, because they aren't
Speaker 4: just in one genetic line. A female fox, out of
Speaker 4: five pups that are born by her, two three maybe
Speaker 4: maybe from another male, not her mate.
Speaker 7: Do you think the mates know that? And they're just like, hey, man,
Speaker 7: it's part of a biodiversity. What are you gonna do?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I think it's just a pattern of life that
Speaker 4: they live. It's like you and I live a pattern
Speaker 4: of life that we don't think too much about, you know,
Speaker 4: because it's just the way things are in our lives.
Speaker 7: So I snooped gander at the two thousand and nine
Speaker 7: paper Multiple Paternity and Kinship in the gray Fox from
Speaker 7: the Journal Mammalian Biology, which concluded that up to fifty
Speaker 7: seven percent of all litters had more than one father,
Speaker 7: with the highest rates seen in the denser populations. And
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, how is how is that possible? Okay, you
Speaker 7: got to get yourself a second uterus. Essentially, a female
Speaker 7: gray fox has a womb for each ovary and thus
Speaker 7: can kind of stagger litters or pause development on an
Speaker 7: embryo and one uterus while she weans the litter from
Speaker 7: the first tank. So one uterus might have Ronald's babies
Speaker 7: and the other might have craigs, and she has to
Speaker 7: grow them and nurse them. So it's her choice, which
Speaker 7: in twenty twenty five shouldn't seem evolved to us. But
Speaker 7: here we are. Do you feel like foxes were waiting
Speaker 7: for someone, particularly gray foxes to come along and study them,
Speaker 7: but they had to make sure that you were cool first.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure about that scenario. I bet I do
Speaker 4: know that shortly after I started this study, a friend
Speaker 4: of mine, Rick Lamman, said to me. He said, Bill,
Speaker 4: you've got to find a fox expert and run some
Speaker 4: of your ideas off on this fox expert. And I
Speaker 4: found doctor Ben sachs at u see Davis. So when
Speaker 4: I went to meet with Ben and talk to him
Speaker 4: about what I doing and everything like that, one of
Speaker 4: the things he said to me, he said, Bill, he said,
Speaker 4: it's about time somebody began to study in depth that
Speaker 4: gray fox, because everybody been't studying the red fox and
Speaker 4: all the rest of them. But not the gray fox.
Speaker 4: I got in on the ground floor.
Speaker 7: And so Bill went on to be the director of
Speaker 7: the independent Urban Gray Fox Research Project and then later
Speaker 7: a co founder of the Urban Wildlife Research Project. Did
Speaker 7: you ever tell your doctor that his prescription for walking
Speaker 7: ended up being very good for you and the gray fox?
Speaker 4: He retired shortly thereafter and I lost track of him.
Speaker 7: The foxes are like, hey, thanks for that. We needed that.
Speaker 7: Someone's got to study us. What are foxes out there eating?
Speaker 7: Are they omnivorous? Are they generalists like coyotes or do
Speaker 7: they just go after mammals or bugs?
Speaker 4: They're omnivorous, Oh yeah, but one of the things they
Speaker 4: do in the process is that they feed on a
Speaker 4: lot of rodents. And it's by way of feeding on
Speaker 4: rodents that they are the well predators, period, are the
Speaker 4: ones that balance out the ecosystem and create a healthy ecosystem.
Speaker 4: So the gray fox will eat anything. Oh wow, Except
Speaker 4: they don't like feathered small birds, although they will on
Speaker 4: occasion capture one and eat them, but mostly it's rodents, squirrels,
Speaker 4: that kind of thing.
Speaker 7: Are they lying in weight to ambush something? Are they
Speaker 7: climbing trees to get birds and squirrels, Like, what does
Speaker 7: it look like when a fox is hungry?
Speaker 4: Oh, let's see. Okay, here's a story.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 4: I was checking my trail cameras and I was going
Speaker 4: back way back into the woods of this one area.
Speaker 4: Behind me, three foxes were following me.
Speaker 7: This man is the snow white foxes, and I love him.
Speaker 4: So I just I didn't pay much attention to them.
Speaker 4: I was leading the way over to my trail camera
Speaker 4: over there, and when I got to the trail camera,
Speaker 4: I noticed that one of the foxes was missing, and
Speaker 4: I had no idea where she had gone. And I
Speaker 4: was leaning over and I looked up and there in
Speaker 4: the tree, about maybe twenty feet away from me, up
Speaker 4: in the tree, there she was. And there was a
Speaker 4: young female that I called Cute. Okay, oh, Qute is
Speaker 4: up in that tree and she is hunting. And what
Speaker 4: she had done is she spotted a squirrel up in
Speaker 4: that tree. She climbed the tree and she gets to
Speaker 4: a location on a branch, and the squirrel is just
Speaker 4: down below her a little ways and oh, she goes
Speaker 4: for it, and she slips and she falls, misses the
Speaker 4: squirrel and falls into a very fine thicket. Oh, no, Yeah,
Speaker 4: she fell right straight down. Anyway, that squirrel gets up
Speaker 4: on that branch where she was and is chittering away,
Speaker 4: you know how they do. Sometimes it was almost as
Speaker 4: he was saying, well, God helped me.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was just laughing at her. Yeah, Like that's
Speaker 7: what you get, was cute? Cute? Is that how she
Speaker 7: got her name?
Speaker 4: Yeah? The first time I saw her, she was coming
Speaker 4: up out of a tunnel trail and I looked at
Speaker 4: her and I said, that's the cutest little fox I've
Speaker 4: ever seen, And so I named her Cute. And her
Speaker 4: mate was the alpha male of the area, and he
Speaker 4: was They didn't like being parents, let me put it
Speaker 4: that way.
Speaker 7: Really.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Over on the other side, the pair of foxes
Speaker 4: Gray and Mama Bold, those two were exquisite parents when
Speaker 4: it came to raising their young, but Cute and Dark
Speaker 4: they didn't like being parents.
Speaker 7: Really, what did they do or what did they not do?
Speaker 4: They tended to ignore their young ones. My Sheila, They
Speaker 4: do enough to feed them and so forth like that,
Speaker 4: and get them up to the point where they could
Speaker 4: hunt for themselves. But a lot of times would and
Speaker 4: would be that Cute would want some attention from Dark
Speaker 4: or her fate, you know, and she'd go over and
Speaker 4: nuzzle him and he would just walk away.
Speaker 7: Oh what a dick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it was like, what come on, guy.
Speaker 7: Yeah, alpha males, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it was like he was fixated on his
Speaker 4: own job. Well, certain times the year, he would chase
Speaker 4: all of the males out of the region because he
Speaker 4: knew that cute was going to have some pups. Oh,
Speaker 4: so he didn't want to have any of the other
Speaker 4: males around, and he chased them to the other side
Speaker 4: of the creek and that was far enough away.
Speaker 7: So gray foxes, they're pretty tiny, they're about the size
Speaker 7: of a house cat. But they do like their territories.
Speaker 7: And I've read that one square mile is enough for
Speaker 7: a family of gray foxes, but of course in urban
Speaker 7: interfaces that's not going to happen, and fox families are
Speaker 7: much more squeezed in. How long is our foxes just stating.
Speaker 4: About fifty three days and in nine months they're ready
Speaker 4: to have their own family.
Speaker 7: That's so quick. So pregnant less than two months and
Speaker 7: in less than a year. Your baby's ready to have
Speaker 7: babies of its own to feed rats too.
Speaker 4: I know. I've watched from little balls of gray fur
Speaker 4: all the way to ready to disperse. I've watched that
Speaker 4: whole process.
Speaker 7: Go wow, how many in a litter?
Speaker 4: Typically usually it is about three, but Mama Bold she
Speaker 4: always had four or five. And one of the other
Speaker 4: things too, is that she kept nursing her pups longer
Speaker 4: than most female gray foxes do, and so they were
Speaker 4: pretty hefty when they get under there. She only had
Speaker 4: six nipples.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and the.
Speaker 4: Number of little foxes under their nursing sometimes one of
Speaker 4: them have to wait.
Speaker 7: Out, like you're trying to get brunch on a Sunday.
Speaker 7: Just on the waiting list. We'll call you when there's
Speaker 7: a nipple ready.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Well, with having a few pups or kits, I always
Speaker 7: thought they were called kits, but you can call them pups.
Speaker 4: Well, they're can irons.
Speaker 7: Oh that makes sense. Why do we hear fox kits
Speaker 7: all the time.
Speaker 4: We've just messed it up. Yeah, So when I hear kit,
Speaker 4: I think of kitten. Yeah, you know cats? Yeah yeah.
Speaker 7: Linguists assert that a baby fox can be called a cub,
Speaker 7: a kit, or a pup. All are correct. But Bill
Speaker 7: is the fox guy. His license plate says fox Guy,
Speaker 7: So I'm never calling them kits. Again, if they are
Speaker 7: able to reproduce it nine months and they have a
Speaker 7: few pups, is their population doing okay? Or are they
Speaker 7: able to reproduce quickly? Or are gray foxes, you know,
Speaker 7: partly because of human development? Are the Are they really
Speaker 7: in decline?
Speaker 4: They're doing it okay?
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 4: There are a few places where there has been recorded
Speaker 4: decline in the number of gray foxes that nobody really
Speaker 4: has an answers to. Why one of the areas is
Speaker 4: in the city of Chicago. It may be because of
Speaker 4: the number of coyotes in Chicago speculation.
Speaker 7: I understand that up in Palo Alto, the Meta campus
Speaker 7: is so large and lush that they have gray foxes
Speaker 7: just hanging out under the windows. Is that true?
Speaker 4: I was the first guy to be called in to
Speaker 4: take a look at the gray foxes at Facebook.
Speaker 7: Really, how did someone find you? I mean, you are
Speaker 7: the fox guy.
Speaker 4: But what happened there was that they were getting quite
Speaker 4: a few gray foxes on the campus. And this was
Speaker 4: the old campus. They've since built a brand new campus
Speaker 4: and I'll get there in a minute. They wanted me
Speaker 4: to come over and assess what to do with these
Speaker 4: because some of the employees were afraid of the foxes,
Speaker 4: and some of the people fed the foxes, and they
Speaker 4: didn't They had no guidelines as to what to do.
Speaker 4: And so I went over there and I took a
Speaker 4: look at the situation, and I discovered that they had
Speaker 4: pups underneath a ramp on the campus. And I turned
Speaker 4: to the people that were there and I said, you're
Speaker 4: not going to be able to move these foxes off campus.
Speaker 4: The best thing we can do is instead of trying
Speaker 4: to get rid of them, let's make them an asset.
Speaker 4: And Mark Zuckerberg said, oh, my god, that's what we
Speaker 4: should do. Really, yeah, And so it was fox It
Speaker 4: became that people were filming the foxeses that were coming
Speaker 4: through the campus and move around and sleeping on their
Speaker 4: cars and all kinds of stuff was going on, and
Speaker 4: people got comfortable with them.
Speaker 7: So this first Facebook fox campus news story broke in
Speaker 7: the spring of twenty thirteen. But about five years later.
Speaker 4: And then they built the new campus over across the highway,
Speaker 4: and that's a big, big, big complex in there. So
Speaker 4: one day the gardener discovered that up on the roof
Speaker 4: of the building there were great foxes up there.
Speaker 7: What how I guess they can climb trees.
Speaker 4: But yeah, but you don't climb a building.
Speaker 7: Yeah, was was there anything up there? Was there just
Speaker 7: like an HVAC system? Or did they have the landscape
Speaker 7: the roof?
Speaker 4: Well again, I go over to Facebook, you know, and
Speaker 4: I'm assessing the situation and so forth, and that question
Speaker 4: came up, Well, how did they get up here?
Speaker 8: You know?
Speaker 4: And they had pops up there too, what babies? Anyway,
Speaker 4: one of the guys that was with us on this
Speaker 4: tour on the roof, he said, you know, he said,
Speaker 4: when we were building this section, we had gigantic ladders
Speaker 4: that were set up on the side of the buildings,
Speaker 4: and they may have climbed up the ladder. No, And
Speaker 4: I said, that's probably it, because I said, I have
Speaker 4: seen firsthand foxes climbing ladders.
Speaker 7: When did you see it?
Speaker 4: I saw it one time when there was a ladder
Speaker 4: up against a dumpster. Oh my god, and the old
Speaker 4: fox just went right right up the ladder, just like
Speaker 4: it was second nature.
Speaker 7: Yeah, as one would. Well, were they stuck on the roof?
Speaker 4: Oh no, No, okay, because in part of the construction
Speaker 4: and everything, they had to have fire escapes. The fire
Speaker 4: escapes are the way down and nowadays the way up.
Speaker 7: So not only were foxes living on this new eco
Speaker 7: friendly landscaped roof, but they also had pops up there
Speaker 7: fully rooftop terrace meno park real estate. Are they usually
Speaker 7: in dens? I always thought that foxes burrowed and lived
Speaker 7: in a cozy little hole that had like a little
Speaker 7: comforter and a bed and a chimney pipe and all
Speaker 7: that stuff. But are they living under brush or do
Speaker 7: different foxes like does a red fox live in a
Speaker 7: totally different type of housing situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, the red fox is the one that digs burrow, okay,
Speaker 4: digs down in and makes rooms underground and everything like
Speaker 4: that for the family. Great foxes don't. Gray foxes will
Speaker 4: find dense, dense tickets areas that are really impossible for
Speaker 4: most to get into. That's where they have their dens.
Speaker 4: Oh and sometimes, like when I first came upon Mama
Speaker 4: Bold and Gray, at first they had den that was
Speaker 4: back under a huge number of trees that were down
Speaker 4: on the ground that had come down. There were eucalyptus trees,
Speaker 4: and they built this den underneath there. And one of
Speaker 4: the guys that worked at the water treatment plant, he
Speaker 4: had been kind of eyeballing the foxes for about twenty years,
Speaker 4: he told me. He said that den has been used
Speaker 4: for at least twenty five years.
Speaker 7: Oh wow, So Bill spent years observing this one fox
Speaker 7: mother he called Mama Bold, who was born in that
Speaker 7: inherited multi generational den nestled under a fallen tree.
Speaker 4: The story behind Mama Bold is really quite an interesting one.
Speaker 7: Yeah, what's her deal?
Speaker 4: When she was a pa she was born in that
Speaker 4: Nato den that I just mentioned, okay, under that pile
Speaker 4: of trees. And when she was really small, her dad,
Speaker 4: the gray fox I called Squat, He had overcome any
Speaker 4: skittishness about me, and he would come out to the
Speaker 4: edge of the road and I'd be across the road
Speaker 4: and I'd chatter at him, you know. And one time
Speaker 4: he looked behind himself into the bushes, and I knew
Speaker 4: right away. I said to myself, there's another fox that
Speaker 4: back there in the brush. And after a while, this
Speaker 4: little pup comes out on the road and gives Squat
Speaker 4: her father a what I call the fox kiss.
Speaker 7: Oh.
Speaker 4: And the fox kiss is a greeting that they give
Speaker 4: the pups give to their adults, and it's a touching
Speaker 4: of the nose or on the cheek sometimes, but it's
Speaker 4: a little kiss. It's a little recognition that hey, you're cool.
Speaker 7: Oh just a side note. Gray foxes have white markings
Speaker 7: on their chin and black around their eyes. But it's
Speaker 7: not all fashion because they also have scent glands on
Speaker 7: their face, and they have scent glands on all four
Speaker 7: feet and have scent glands in their butt, And no,
Speaker 7: you can't have them removed. If you wanted a pet fox,
Speaker 7: you simply would live in a stinky house which was
Speaker 7: also scented with pa It's a bold smell, indeed. But
Speaker 7: back to the baby foxes. So the one bill called
Speaker 7: Mama Bold was a little two month old pop who
Speaker 7: started very skittish and then she grew into this big,
Speaker 7: confident personality, eventually becoming that doting mother with the big
Speaker 7: litters of chubby, strong foxes that we talked about earlier,
Speaker 7: very busy nipples.
Speaker 4: But when she was younger, and after a while, she
Speaker 4: would sit in the middle of the road and I
Speaker 4: could do almost anything, and she wouldn't go she wouldn't
Speaker 4: zoom out, you know. So that was the start of
Speaker 4: Mama Bold. But when it came time for her to disperse.
Speaker 4: She tried, but there wasn't anywhere to go. That's one
Speaker 4: of the downsides of the Palo Alto Baylands. There's patches
Speaker 4: of habitat, but there's nothing really good and connected and
Speaker 4: so forth.
Speaker 7: Well, Palo Alto real estate is really tough, Yeah.
Speaker 4: It is. So what happens is that one morning I'm
Speaker 4: walking on one of the trails and Bold is behind me,
Speaker 4: and there's a chain link fence. On the other side
Speaker 4: of that fence comes Squat Enter Squat.
Speaker 7: A short little fox dude, and Mama Bold's.
Speaker 4: Dad, and he's coming in a determined sort of way.
Speaker 7: Huh.
Speaker 4: She knew what was coming. She ran and I thought,
Speaker 4: oh my god, but I didn't quit. I for some reason.
Speaker 4: I ran after them. And down on the road is
Speaker 4: Squat and Bold facing off with one another, and she's
Speaker 4: got her mouth wide open and she's ready to rip
Speaker 4: into her father. Oh wow, And this brief, really brief,
Speaker 4: two three second fight begins and it stops. It freezes,
Speaker 4: and everything seemed to be freezing right there on the spot.
Speaker 7: Who was watching the fight another male fox, And when
Speaker 7: Mama Bolds saw him, she ran off with him. So
Speaker 7: take that, dad, I'm in love.
Speaker 4: I turned back to look to see where Squat was.
Speaker 4: I never saw him again. He vanished, really and she
Speaker 4: took over his territory.
Speaker 7: And that was her father.
Speaker 4: Yeah, drama, Squat's daughter took over all of the territory
Speaker 4: that he once had as her own.
Speaker 7: That's like succession or something. That's like an age bo drama.
Speaker 7: That's like Game of Thrones kind of stuff. Those dynamics
Speaker 7: are so intense, you know, which is must be such
Speaker 7: a joy to watch, And I know I wanted to
Speaker 7: ask just like two questions from listeners. So many questions
Speaker 7: were about red foxes and folks. This is exciting because
Speaker 7: now we get to have a second Fox episode called Wolpanology.
Speaker 7: But in a second we're going to answer more than
Speaker 7: two questions submitted by patrons. At patreon dot com slash Ologies,
Speaker 7: you can join for as little as a dollar a month.
Speaker 7: But first, let's donate to a cause, and of course
Speaker 7: it'll be going to the Urban Wildlife Research Project, which
Speaker 7: is dedicated to protecting the gray fox and other urban
Speaker 7: wildlife in the San Francisco Bay area and they do
Speaker 7: groundbreaking research, advocacy, and public education. They document wildlife behavior
Speaker 7: to safeguard the biodiverse habitats that they rely on too,
Speaker 7: and their mission is not just about conservation, they say,
Speaker 7: it's about fostering a world where people and wildlife can
Speaker 7: thrive together. And right now, the Urban Wildlife Research Project
Speaker 7: is taking on a really exciting project looking to fund
Speaker 7: the removal of concrete from a place called Mattador Creek,
Speaker 7: which also has Beaver's side note, and they want to
Speaker 7: open up those waterways so wildlife from the Palo Alto
Speaker 7: Baylands areas can move up into the Santa Cruz Mountains
Speaker 7: and thereby interface with a healthy genetic pool. Bill told
Speaker 7: me so. To support their work, and also to get
Speaker 7: Bill's excellent newsletter, which I love, go to Urban Wildlife
Speaker 7: Research Project dot org, which we're going to link in
Speaker 7: the show notes. And thank you to sponsors of ologies
Speaker 7: for making these donations possible.
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Speaker 7: Okay, let's scramble up a tree to the Patreon mailbag
Speaker 7: and get your questions. Emil wanted to know.
Speaker 9: Why are fox has seen a sneaky sly Like they're
Speaker 9: so cute and they're so expressive with their pretty eyes
Speaker 9: and their eyelashes, and I just don't understand why they're
Speaker 9: scene is like sneaky and sly.
Speaker 4: They're smart, ah sli and small of that attributed to
Speaker 4: foxes goes all the way back to Aesop Oh Asop's fables,
Speaker 4: and if you read any of Aesop's fables there it's
Speaker 4: always sly, cunning fox. Their teaching stories is what they are.
Speaker 4: He dubbed them that, and we've never changed it. It's
Speaker 4: just the pattern of and belief has come down for
Speaker 4: over two thousand years.
Speaker 7: I went to fact check this and hold up Asop's
Speaker 7: fables are over two thousand years old. I thought that
Speaker 7: had to be a misspeak, but no, it's right on
Speaker 7: the money news to me. ASoP lived around six hundred
Speaker 7: BCE as an enslaved person in Greece, and his Wikipedia
Speaker 7: notes that he was a gifted storyteller but quote strikingly ugly,
Speaker 7: which seems an unnecessary detail, but to people who have
Speaker 7: dated comedians it may be relevant. And a twenty twenty
Speaker 7: one paper titled Asop's Fables Analysis of Major Characters notes
Speaker 7: that the fox appears the most frequently of all the
Speaker 7: animals in his fables, and although usually representing cunning, deceit,
Speaker 7: or treachery, the fox also occasionally serves as a more
Speaker 7: general figure, like a basic representative of humanity. But yeah,
Speaker 7: usually in these stories the fox is too clever for it,
Speaker 7: so I'm good and it's a victim of hubris and folly.
Speaker 7: There must be depictions that Bill loves, though there's so
Speaker 7: many to choose from. Well, speaking of pop culture, Mel
Speaker 7: from New Zealand wants to know.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 15: It's Mel here from New Zealand. I'm curious how close
Speaker 15: are foxes and what they do and how they live
Speaker 15: to the movie fantastic, mister Fox.
Speaker 4: Thanks, I've never watched that movie.
Speaker 9: Really?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Is there a movie that is good about foxes that
Speaker 7: you say they got it right?
Speaker 16: A little?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 7: No, Fox and the Hound Robin hood.
Speaker 4: I. I haven't paid any attention to those those stories.
Speaker 7: I respect that now. Some of you had for questions,
Speaker 7: such as Connie DeFazio, Lynette Davila Kylisi, some question asker Rosamunda,
Speaker 7: Jada Lin and in the Tangle System's words, are they soft?
Speaker 7: Do they like pettons? Can I smush my face on
Speaker 7: their fur and hug them and give them food and
Speaker 7: play with them? The Tangle System No, but with enough
Speaker 7: data we can at least imagine the experience. Do you
Speaker 7: ever get to observe them very very closely? Some people
Speaker 7: wanted to know about their hair, if it's very coarse,
Speaker 7: if it's very fuzzy, if it's the guard hairs over
Speaker 7: and the soft underneath. Our foxes as fuzzy and cute
Speaker 7: as they look.
Speaker 4: Short to Answery, Yes, okay, yeah. First of all, even
Speaker 4: though they tolerate me within their environment, they have their limits,
Speaker 4: and their limits are It's about five six seven feet
Speaker 4: the closest they'll come after that, it's really nervous kiddish time.
Speaker 4: So I have never had the urge and I've never
Speaker 4: petted one. They don't come that close.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And if you're wondering how soft are these critters,
Speaker 7: keep in mind that the gray fox is also called
Speaker 7: the mained fox because of its bristly ridge of hairs
Speaker 7: along the top of its tail. Once again, dogs, cats
Speaker 7: excellent pets. There's less p They have softer fur. They
Speaker 7: are available at a shelter near you for not a
Speaker 7: lot of money. But of course, in a dream sequence,
Speaker 7: if you got to pet the belly of a tiny
Speaker 7: gray fox.
Speaker 4: Well, their fur is soft. I have a mounted fox
Speaker 4: that I take out when I give public lectures and
Speaker 4: presentations on it. It's a little mounted fox named Rusty. Oh,
Speaker 4: and he's really cool. Kids love him.
Speaker 7: Do you know Rusty's backstory.
Speaker 4: The way he came about was that San Jose State
Speaker 4: University had in their science apartment they had a gray fox,
Speaker 4: a mounted gray fox in their study. So when I
Speaker 4: started going out to give presentations, I would borrow this
Speaker 4: gray fox from San Jose State. And it was an
Speaker 4: ugly looking gray fox. It wasn't mounted very well and
Speaker 4: it wasn't. It was so old that it had lost
Speaker 4: a lot of its color. So I got online and
Speaker 4: I decided, I'm going to find a gray fox that
Speaker 4: really is representative of what I'm seeing out in the field.
Speaker 4: And I contacted a guy over in Massachusetts and he
Speaker 4: had some online for sale mounted gray foxes, and I
Speaker 4: looked at them all and I didn't I wasn't attracted
Speaker 4: to any of them. But he had his phone number
Speaker 4: up there too, so I gave him a call and
Speaker 4: I said, Hey, do you have any other mounted foxes?
Speaker 4: And he said I do, well. He put Rusty up
Speaker 4: there and they that was it. That was it. Oh,
Speaker 4: that was the fox that I needed. I bought it,
Speaker 4: gave it to San Use State and they held on
Speaker 4: to it for some about five years. But then they
Speaker 4: shut down the department that this was housed in, and
Speaker 4: the curator contacted me and she said, you better get
Speaker 4: over here right away because they're taking all of the
Speaker 4: materials that we have here. She said, I don't know
Speaker 4: what they're going to do with it, but Rusty as
Speaker 4: part of that. I went booming down there to State
Speaker 4: and picked up Rusty and I have him now here.
Speaker 7: Oh, I can't imagine him being in better hands. Obviously.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's cool.
Speaker 7: And just a side note, don't cry because usually taxidermists
Speaker 7: who deal with museums are using specimens that were killed
Speaker 7: naturally and then found and donated, or they were ambassador
Speaker 7: species that were then donated. And for more on this
Speaker 7: and why I had a dead quail in my freezer
Speaker 7: for like over a year, please see the Nasology episode
Speaker 7: with expert and award winning taxidermist Alice Markham, which is
Speaker 7: linked in the show notes. So it's not all dark.
Speaker 7: Speaking of darkness, a few people wanted to know Amanavegan
Speaker 7: and Sarah wanted to know if they are nocturnal. Sarah asked,
Speaker 7: if a fox is out during the day, is that bad?
Speaker 7: Does it mean it has rabies or mange? And is
Speaker 7: that true across a lot of foxes or does it
Speaker 7: really depend on the species?
Speaker 4: They are not strictly nocturnal, okay. Foxes when they sleep,
Speaker 4: they don't sleep like you and I do. Oh really,
Speaker 4: there's another characteristic like catlike they nap. They'll nap for
Speaker 4: about maybe twenty thirty minutes, and then they wake up
Speaker 4: and they go to another location where they have another
Speaker 4: sleeping bed. Really, and they can do this numerous times
Speaker 4: during the course of the day. So you might see
Speaker 4: a gray fox in the middle of the day going
Speaker 4: from one sleeping location to another location.
Speaker 7: They've evolved to just function sleeping in these kind of naps. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: I mean, I wish my brain did that. I would
Speaker 7: get a lot more done. Bill also sent me an
Speaker 7: email after we chatted, regretting that he didn't define crepuscular,
Speaker 7: but I got you Bill. Bill wrote, crepuscular means that
Speaker 7: an animal like the gray fox has daytime hours. On
Speaker 7: each end of the day. They are up and about
Speaker 7: hunting and going about fox things a couple hours after
Speaker 7: sunrise and a few hours before nightfall. And he also
Speaker 7: added that quote. Another story I missed was when the
Speaker 7: male gray fox, Brownie, and his mate little One got
Speaker 7: a divorce. That was kind of sad the way she
Speaker 7: handled it, he wrote, And that breaks me speaking of
Speaker 7: sadness and worry. Some of you Alia Meyers, Lisa Gorman,
Speaker 7: Ali's Tie, Andy Pepper, Clara Noon Gosser, Chris Carrius, Alicia Harris,
Speaker 7: Lauren Robinson, her Ladyship Chen and first time question asked
Speaker 7: Chris Lydia Trump and Tim Farth wanted to know a
Speaker 7: lot of people were worried about conservation and Courtney Peterson,
Speaker 7: they live in Utah and wanted to know.
Speaker 16: How can I save the foxes? Or better ask, how
Speaker 16: can I help conserve them? I live in a rural
Speaker 16: area that's becoming quickly developed, and a lot of people
Speaker 16: around here don't like the foxes because they kill their
Speaker 16: chickens and everything. But how could I help conserve the
Speaker 16: foxes in my area?
Speaker 4: Thank you?
Speaker 7: And Bria says it's kind of a bummer to think
Speaker 7: about what might happen to foxes, and so, yeah, where
Speaker 7: are we at and what can we do?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, we got to overcome the notion
Speaker 4: that they're chicken killers. We're living at a time when
Speaker 4: we are interfacing with more and more wildlife out there,
Speaker 4: and in so doing, one of the things we have
Speaker 4: to learn to do is if we have chicken coop,
Speaker 4: we keep the chickens completely isolated from the outside world.
Speaker 4: By that, I mean you have a chicken pen, but
Speaker 4: you also put a top on the chicken pen, oh god,
Speaker 4: a roof so to speak, and it can just be
Speaker 4: wire up in there. But any way that they can
Speaker 4: get into the chicken pen, they will. Yeah, so you
Speaker 4: have to isolate your chickens off to the side and
Speaker 4: make sure that they are inaccessible.
Speaker 7: I know you want chicken tips, And luckily we have
Speaker 7: a two part episode on chickens with expert and author
Speaker 7: of the book Under the Henfluence, Tova Kate Danovich. Peck
Speaker 7: it at the link in the show notes. But yeah,
Speaker 7: as we also discussed in the Indigenous Fire Ecology episode
Speaker 7: with doctor Amy Christensen, we who or wildlife human interface
Speaker 7: is getting pretty razor thin, and the more humans move
Speaker 7: in to the forests and the wilds, the more of
Speaker 7: a bummer it can be for the critters. So you
Speaker 7: have to be careful when you invade wildlife territory, and
Speaker 7: you got to keep your side of the street clean
Speaker 7: and don't complain about foxes acting like.
Speaker 4: Foxes, and then we can live side by side. So
Speaker 4: with development coming in, I think I don't like that
Speaker 4: word of development. When I think of development, I think
Speaker 4: with uplifting kinds of things. But this kind of development destroys,
Speaker 4: and it destroys habitat. So with more and more of
Speaker 4: that coming in, and more and more the foxes showing
Speaker 4: up in your backyard at night usually is a good
Speaker 4: thing because what they're doing will go back to what
Speaker 4: they're doing is they're keeping the rodent population in check,
Speaker 4: and so you're not going to have a rat problem.
Speaker 4: You're going to have a good balanced ecosystem. And as
Speaker 4: long as we can keep that going, we're okay around here.
Speaker 4: I have had one two, I've had four cases over
Speaker 4: the course of the time that I've been monitoring these foxes,
Speaker 4: to where whole neighborhoods were quote invaded by gray foxes.
Speaker 4: I'm envious. And most of the people who lived in
Speaker 4: those subdivisions and those places usually right along a creek
Speaker 4: by the way, the people just got so used to
Speaker 4: them that they do photo ops with them. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, taking pictures and put it on the next
Speaker 4: door and so forth like that. And a lot of
Speaker 4: people get a hold of me and they want to
Speaker 4: know what to do, you know, when they have, let's say,
Speaker 4: a family of foxes under their deck. This one man,
Speaker 4: he contacted me and he said, I have a little dog, okay,
Speaker 4: and this family of foxes has moved in under by
Speaker 4: deck and I don't want them there. What do I do?
Speaker 4: My first impulse was to say, leave them alone. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and so in the end I told him how to
Speaker 4: block off the deck so that they couldn't get back
Speaker 4: in under there, and he was successful. They hung around
Speaker 4: for about three or four days. He said. They were
Speaker 4: just crying, he said. Then they left. They disappeared.
Speaker 7: Oh poor sweeties. Do they ever eat cats or little dogs?
Speaker 4: I've never heard of any. No, I've never doing that.
Speaker 4: Coyotes yep, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: Just a side note, Grey foxes are more capable of
Speaker 7: meal planning than I am, and I have thumbs. But
Speaker 7: they cash their food hiding carcasses among piles of leaf
Speaker 7: litter or buried in loose soil, and they go back
Speaker 7: and eat it later. And kind of like your coworker
Speaker 7: marking leftover pad tie with a sharpie. Foxes poop on
Speaker 7: top of their cash site to say, don't dare, but
Speaker 7: no poop. Fair game. Now, on the subject of microbes
Speaker 7: et cetera, let's talk about a bummer disease and wild populations.
Speaker 7: Bill opened up about a very difficult aspect of being
Speaker 7: the fox guy.
Speaker 4: But canine distemper is a major major problem in this
Speaker 4: area that I'm monitoring. By twenty sixteen, I had twenty
Speaker 4: five foxes that I was monitoring, and that tells you
Speaker 4: something right there. There wasn't enough room for them to
Speaker 4: spread out like they should have, so they were crowded
Speaker 4: like neighbors side by side, having their pups and so forth.
Speaker 7: And this was in twenty sixteen, a very dark time
Speaker 7: for Bill and his foxes.
Speaker 4: So in November I noticed some of the foxes missing,
Speaker 4: and Mama Bold was one of those. And at that
Speaker 4: time I didn't know what the oversigns of canine distemper were,
Speaker 4: but one of them is a pus like oozing from
Speaker 4: the eyes, and when you see that, you know they've
Speaker 4: got canine distemper. Well. So in November December of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: all twenty five foxes were wiped out. No, yeah, they
Speaker 4: were hit by canine distemper. And we had the net
Speaker 4: crop seed at UC Davis at the vet lab there,
Speaker 4: and the lead state veterinarian told us that they had
Speaker 4: analyzed the two foxes. I said, well, where did it
Speaker 4: come from, you know? And she said, you know, in
Speaker 4: the state of California. Here, she said, I get die
Speaker 4: out from all of the state every year and it's CA.
Speaker 4: Nine distemper and we don't know where it comes from.
Speaker 4: She said, it's like it's like it lives in the
Speaker 4: earth itself. So with that die out, then I lost
Speaker 4: all of my foxes. And I waited. I waited two
Speaker 4: years and one month with cameras on for that whole
Speaker 4: period of time, waiting, waiting, waiting for the gray fox
Speaker 4: to show up. And who shows up? Limos and big eyes. Oh,
Speaker 4: the last two gray foxes that I monitored out there
Speaker 4: at the Daylands before they died of CA nine distemper.
Speaker 16: No.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she died in February of last year, and he
Speaker 4: died November the year before.
Speaker 7: His last two foxes. This is gutting, and I was
Speaker 7: trying to control my face from just crumbling on the
Speaker 7: video call. Is there anything that can be done to
Speaker 7: prevent it? Does it mean if there was kind of
Speaker 7: a pandemic in that area that more foxes will catch
Speaker 7: it from environmental Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's still out there and it's still a danger
Speaker 4: to them all, and there's nothing, nothing that is effective.
Speaker 4: There's been attempts to make an edible that has a
Speaker 4: vaccine a drug, yeah, yeah, and it would kill off
Speaker 4: K nine distemper, but that hasn't worked too well.
Speaker 7: What do they do for dogs, Well, there's no treatment,
Speaker 7: just prevention by way of vaccination, So vaccinate your dogs.
Speaker 7: Research has shown that dogs can carry and spread distemper
Speaker 7: to wildlife, and wildlife are difficult, if not impossible, to vaccinate.
Speaker 7: So what else can you do for these foxes or
Speaker 7: not to do?
Speaker 4: Not put that direct poison out there, put an owl
Speaker 4: up there instead. Yeah, that's what we need to do.
Speaker 4: And I've been trying to push one of the complexes,
Speaker 4: one of the high tech complexes, to try it. On
Speaker 4: the border of the area that I'm monitoring. I've been
Speaker 4: trying to get them to get rid of those boxes
Speaker 4: and put in owl boxes instead.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we have gophers, and we put up a barn
Speaker 7: owl box, and we were so sad that it's been unoccupied,
Speaker 7: and then we realized it was unoccupied because we have
Speaker 7: a pair of owls that moved in of great horned owls,
Speaker 7: which don't necessarily like to play well with barn owls.
Speaker 7: But that's great. We hear the owls hooting every night,
Speaker 7: and we have fewer gophers than we did in the past.
Speaker 7: So and we've had to ask all our neighbors like,
Speaker 7: please don't put out any strict nine or any rat poison,
Speaker 7: because these beautiful horn owls are like, you know, there's
Speaker 7: such a treat to have in the neighborhood and are
Speaker 7: helping so much. Just a side note, a barn owl
Speaker 7: or a great horn owl can eat thousands of mice
Speaker 7: a year, sometimes up to two hefty rats a night,
Speaker 7: just in case you don't have local foxes and you
Speaker 7: want to outsource your rodent control to like a hit
Speaker 7: man with a beak and a family. But back to foxes,
Speaker 7: I gather that these losses, a whole multi generational gray
Speaker 7: fox community wiped out suddenly, is just beyond the worst
Speaker 7: part of his work. What do you think is your
Speaker 7: favorite thing about studying animals in the wild and your
Speaker 7: favorite thing about maybe gray foxes.
Speaker 4: Overall. I've always said this, Okay, I'm not doing really
Speaker 4: anything of very much importance. I have always said that
Speaker 4: the gray foxes, and I can expand it out into
Speaker 4: a lot of other wildlife are my professors, and I'm
Speaker 4: a grad student in their course, and I'm being taught
Speaker 4: by them what they are all about. And all I'm
Speaker 4: doing is just documenting, putting down notes, moving it over
Speaker 4: into my log, and that log now is well over
Speaker 4: two million words.
Speaker 7: Oh my gosh, how do you keep track of that?
Speaker 7: Do you write it in a Google doc or do
Speaker 7: you have it in notepads?
Speaker 4: Or well? I first, I have a notepad like this,
Speaker 4: and this is what I take my notes on. When
Speaker 4: I'm out in the field. I take it here, and
Speaker 4: then when I come back here to the computer, I
Speaker 4: have an ongoing daily log, and I put it in
Speaker 4: a narrative form into the log, and the log tells
Speaker 4: a story, a long, long story of daily documenting the
Speaker 4: behavior that I saw out there in the field.
Speaker 7: There's even a short documentary about our new favorite fox guy,
Speaker 7: and it's called The Foxes My Professors, and we'll link
Speaker 7: it in the show notes because it's beautiful and Bill's great,
Speaker 7: and you and the Foxes deserve to see it. This
Speaker 7: has been so amazing. I'm so glad I finally got
Speaker 7: to talk to you. You've been on my list of
Speaker 7: people to talk to you for literally years.
Speaker 4: How come? I mean, what what initiated that I always
Speaker 4: want to know this kind of thing?
Speaker 7: I think, looking for fox experts, looking for people who
Speaker 7: mention other people, other animal behaviorists, so you just end
Speaker 7: up hearing little chatter and then when someone has the
Speaker 7: Fox guys their middle name, you can't not talk to
Speaker 7: that guy. You got to talk to the Fox guy.
Speaker 4: Well, if you ever come up this way, just get
Speaker 4: in touch with me and we'll go out and I'll
Speaker 4: show you the landscape.
Speaker 7: I would love that. I need to make a trip
Speaker 7: up there. Yeah, okay, So ask fox people facts because honestly,
Speaker 7: their favorite topic is my favorite topic. I think you
Speaker 7: will find the same. And in the future we will
Speaker 7: do a vulpanology episode. But dang, these little gray ones,
Speaker 7: they have my hearts. It's going to be hard to top. Now.
Speaker 7: In the show notes, we've linked Bill's fantastic fox book,
Speaker 7: The Road to Foxhallow, and we've also linked the nonprofit
Speaker 7: Urban Wildlife Research Project. I highly recommend signing up for
Speaker 7: Bill's newsletter if you like beautiful pros and ecology and
Speaker 7: pictures of egregiously cute foxes.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 7: We are at ologies on Blue Sky and Instagram. I'm
Speaker 7: Ali Ward with one L on both. You can sign
Speaker 7: up for our Patreon at Patreon dot com, slash ologies
Speaker 7: Ologies merch is at ologiesmerch dot com. We also have
Speaker 7: shorter kid friendly episodes that are g rated. Those are
Speaker 7: called Smologies and available at the link in the show
Speaker 7: notes or wherever you get podcasts. Aaron Talbert admit Ziologies
Speaker 7: podcast Facebook group. Aveline Mallick makes our professional transcripts.
Speaker 4: Kelly R.
Speaker 7: Dwyer does the website. Noel Dilworth is our scheduling producer.
Speaker 7: Susan Hale managing directs A Whole Shabang, and our amazing
Speaker 7: editors are Jake Chafe and Mercee. He's Matland of Matland Audio.
Speaker 7: Nick Thorburn means the theme music and if you stick
Speaker 7: around until the very episode, I tell you a secret
Speaker 7: this week is that Jarrett your pod mother. My spouse
Speaker 7: has had me simply the fox emoji in his phone
Speaker 7: for years and it is a vulpus fox and now
Speaker 7: I'm like, well, okay, but I'll take it. Also, I
Speaker 7: want to leave you this week with Bill's email signature,
Speaker 7: which reads, have a good day, keep moving on, keep
Speaker 7: doing our best. Bill freaking love this guy.
Speaker 10: Okay from a Hacadermistology, homeology, rycdo zoology, lithology, new technology, meteorology, pathology, anthology, seriology, selenology.
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