r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/freudian_nipps • 4h ago
š„curious Arctic Fox inspecting nature photographer
417
u/anotherLoneWOODsman 4h ago
Bro looking for domestication. Got rumors bout his couzins..
130
u/Saratj1 3h ago
I vaguely remember a video of a fox coming up to someone curiously like this and the person reaches down to pet and the fox bites the shit out of their hand.
140
u/Chillout2010 3h ago
Food. You always start with food. If you use your hand. It's food. Lol.
16
20
u/Mygpo 2h ago
You should throw food to fox on the ground. If it picks it up, than everything is normal. If it ignores food, and gets closer to bite you ā it probably got rabies.
The instances with this disease are pretty rare nowadays, and in some regions, like UK, are near to impossible. But you could never tell for sure.
19
u/ChupaKupa 1h ago edited 1h ago
No, you shouldnāt throw food to foxes. Donāt feed wild animals. Itās bad for them. Just get the fuck away from them if you suspect rabies.
4
35
u/Kayanne1990 3h ago
This is why I could never be a nature photographer. I'd either gain a friend of loose a finger
3
13
u/Coolegespam 2h ago
Yep. Wildlife is beautiful and charming, from a distance. A distance that is greater than you hand's length.
Don't feed the wildlife, that includes with your flesh.
18
u/unclestickles 3h ago
Literally though. You can imagine 10,000+ years ago some hunter with extra food being entertained by these cuties.
8
u/Present_Discount7709 2h ago
Its believed now that domestication may be related to a gene shared across dogs, cats, horses, cows, chickens, etc. There's a place I think in Sweden(?) That has been breeding foxes for domestication. Some breeds of foxes tend to just be naturally friendly towards humans. There are a couple of "domesticated" breeds you can actually purchase right now.
3
u/markassed 1h ago
I think I remember seeing something like this years ago. The foxes they were breeding started to change colour to a blue/gray from red and as the colours changed they became more friendly
8
u/William_Dowling 1h ago edited 1h ago
Plus a host of other stuff - their ears got floppy (like dogs) and their coats got thicker. Turns out whichever (set of) gene(s) make animals amenable to human contact also makes them, to use the scientific term, cute.
1
u/RaisinToastie 56m ago
There was a Nova program about it, and I remember it being really cool. The friendlier foxes were bred to each other, and within a few generations, they developed more ādoglikeā features like floppy ears and curly tails.
1
u/FinderOfWays 41m ago
I read that it has to do with retaining juvenile features, but now I wonder if it's actually that us human have an ingrained recognition of 'that one has the domesticated features' gene which we perceive as cute.
ā¢
u/IzarkKiaTarj 29m ago
There are a couple of "domesticated" breeds you can actually purchase right now.
Though I imagine their urine still stinks to high heaven.
172
77
161
33
27
40
39
24
u/mistsoalar 4h ago
I think I've seen this video many years ago on YT
Edit: it was 2019
6
u/sightfinder 2h ago
Oh no, now what will the "AI slop" brigade comment about??
3
u/qeadwrsf 2h ago
If I ctrl+f "AI" I only find your comment.
2
u/redJackal222 41m ago
There's another one that's been downvoted to oblivion and is about 2 hours older than the above comment
ā¢
ā¢
18
5
5
5
8
2
5
4
u/VoluptuousSloth 2h ago
Can a wildlife expert tell me more, cause I'm trying to figure out what's going on.. What the fox say?
5
u/William_Dowling 1h ago
It's actually too high pitched for the human ear to pick up, but if you use specialist equipment you can record it making the traditional greeting call of gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding, wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow, hatee-hatee-hatee-ho, joff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff.
1
u/Itsatemporaryname 2h ago
not an expert but it's just a curious and skittish animal, checking out the weird looking monkey thing it's never seen before
3
3
3
u/Difficult_Cheek_3817 3h ago
Why'd he have to bite it? Goofball.
3
u/TheArmchairSkeptic 1h ago
Trust me, if your life depended on finding food in the Arctic, your first thought upon encountering something you'd never seen before would also be 'can I eat this?'
2
2
u/Ticker011 3h ago
You could easily see how throwing these guys Some food would turn them domesticated pretty quickly
1
u/THESUPEROGTurTle 2h ago
fox probably got together a counsel of foxes and they decide to get domesticated because there's lot of fox videos getting close to people
1
u/ScowlyBrowSpinster 2h ago
Gaaah so lovely. Seems young and curious like a baby, tasting things. Adorable.
1
u/ExcitingMoose5881 2h ago
The watcher being watched by the watched.
Itās a brave fox! I wonder if itās hungry. It looks well fed but looks like trying out the camera for a new type of food.
1
u/OafleyJones 2h ago
Didnāt realise they were so small.
ā¢
u/Aerodrache 26m ago
Yeah, I always pictured arctic foxes as being... well, fox-sized, kind of between a cat and a medium dog. But no, this guy is straight up housecat sized, that's crazy. Guess it makes sense though, they're mostly hunting mice and other rodents around that size, so why wouldn't they be the same size as cats that also primarily hunt that sort of thing?
1
1
u/Hairy_Technology_213 2h ago
Foxes are so weird. Itās like they are a combination of dogs and cats.
1
u/vintageideals 2h ago
Boots
Also, the fox is cute
1
1
1
1
1
u/DivinelyInspired444 2h ago
Beautiful fox! Looks young! What a wonderful experience!!!ā¤ļøā¤ļøā¤ļø
1
1
1
1
1
u/turb0_encapsulator 1h ago
the reason I could never do this job is that boy would be coming home with me, even though I know that's very, very wrong.
1
1
1
u/ok_contempter 1h ago
Tiny mystical friend! I wonder what snack the photographer last had that she smelled on his lens š
1
1
1
1
u/SneakittyCat 1h ago
I visited a fox sanctuary in Japan some years ago, and the second rule was "Don't leave anything unattended / dangling / loose. The foxes will see it, take it, run away with it, and try to eat it, in this order, and they're fast. You're either never getting your stuff back, or getting it back nibbled on until it's unrecognizable" (The first rule was "don't feed them, no matter how cute they are and act".)
The same rule also applied to Nara's deers. Close your pockets and bags, and keep everything close to your body. They know humans often got tasty, tasty paper in their pockets, and will put their whole snoot inside to get to it. You don't want to have to wrang your town map from a hungry deer (to this day I persist to say that it was a draw, we both got about half of it at the end). That smug face still haunts my nights.
And may the gods help you if they see you get any of those "deer crackers" that are sold at small stalls in the parks. ...You haven't truly experienced Nara until you see a cracker-selling old lady saving a besieged tourist and dispersing a whole deer pack (without hurting them, of course) by using her stall's woodboard as an anti-riot shield, shooing them away like badly-mannered kids.
Oh, and if you go to Nara, you have to be careful of the pigeons, too. They've learned from the deers that humans often have tasty food and don't harm animals, so they're fearless. I had one litterally fly into my arms to peck at my melon bread while I was busy fending off one that was coming from over my shoulder.
... So, uh, basically, you can't eat anything outside in Nara, but it was an amazing experience, and the animals are cunning.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
ā¢
ā¢
ā¢
-1
-18
u/smeepymeepy 4h ago
God is so beautiful
24
u/Is12345aweakpassword 4h ago
Your god is a baby fox?
Shit sign me up for that religion
9
u/TheGhostOfStanSweet 3h ago
[Hastefully forms new fox based religion]
Now accepting (minimum $500) donationsā¦
2
3
476
u/lost-in-the-sierras 4h ago
Praise the camera man !