Perhaps you might not have heard of this foxy desert character, either.
I first saw it in a video that came up while I was researching a post on the fennec fox —
— and was almost fooled by the resemblance, though careful examination showed that it wasn’t really a fennec. Its ears are different, for one thing, and it is larger than a fennec fox, though much smaller than a red fox.
I didn’t know what it was until I recently reviewed material on sand cats for a Vella episode, saw images of Ruppell’s fox, and realized who our little movie star actually was.
It inhabits roughly the same range as sand cats — unfortunately, that region is too remote for us to hope for video of interactions between the cat and the canid!
Shaky cam, but that fox has excellent camouflage! (It’s small enough to be vulnerable to birds, but raptors certainly will have to look hard to find it.)
More information
- Canid Specialist Group page.
- Arabian Wikipedia calls it, among other things, a sand fox (autotranslated).
- English Wikipedia page.
Some lagniappe:
What was that fox chasing — a mouse?
Yes, sort of.
Featured image: Henri Martin/Shutterstock
Flight To Wonder 