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The words fox and foxy have become slang in English-speaking societies for an individual (most often female) with sex appeal. The word vixen, which is normally the common name for a female fox, is also used to describe an attractive woman—although, in the case of humans, "vixen" tends to imply that the woman in question has a few nasty qualities.
The South American gray fox, Lycalopex griseus, is the most common species, and is known for its large ears and a highly marketable, russet-fringed pelt. The second-oldest known fossils belonging to the genus were discovered in Chile , and date from 2.0 to 2.5 million years ago, in the mid- to late Pliocene . [ 4 ]
The word fox comes from Old English and derives from Proto-Germanic *fuhsaz. [ nb 1 ] This in turn derives from Proto-Indo-European * puḱ- "thick-haired, tail." [ nb 2 ] Male foxes are known as dogs , tods , or reynards ; females as vixens ; and young as cubs , pups , or kits , though the last term is not to be confused with the kit fox , a ...
In the English language, many animals have different names depending on whether they are male, female, young, domesticated, or in groups. The best-known source of many English words used for collective groupings of animals is The Book of Saint Albans, an essay on hunting published in 1486 and attributed to Juliana Berners. [1]
An alternative etymological explanation, which is commonly found on the internet, states that the name may have derived from the Arabic word for 'valley' or 'river' (wadi) and the Latin word lupus, meaning 'wolf'. Another possibility is that it comes from وادي الحب, wādī al-hubb, meaning "River of Love".
The spiritual meaning behind seeing a grey fox is far different than when seeing a red one. Mello's take on the spiritual meaning of a gray fox is that it "represent[s] our need for isolation and ...
Juvenile red foxes are known as kits. Males are called tods or dogs, females are called vixens, and young are known as cubs or kits. [14] Although the Arctic fox has a small native population in northern Scandinavia, and while the corsac fox's range extends into European Russia, the red fox is the only fox native to Western Europe, and so is simply called "the fox" in colloquial British English.
The Pampas fox (Lycalopex gymnocercus), also known as grey pampean fox, Pampas zorro, Azara's fox, or Azara's zorro (in Guaraní also called aguará chaí, anglicized as aguarachay, in Portuguese also called graxaim ([ɡɾaʃaˈĩ]), [4] is a medium-sized zorro, or "false" fox, native to the South American Pampas.