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The fennec fox (Vulpes zerda) is a small fox native to the deserts of North Africa, ranging from Western Sahara and Mauritania to the Sinai Peninsula. Its most distinctive feature is its unusually large ears, which serve to dissipate heat and listen for underground prey.
#7 Desert Foxes Use Their Big Ears To Keep Cool Desert foxes, especially the tiny Fennec Fox, have really big ears. But these ears aren’t just good for hearing.
The fennec fox's large ears help keep it cool: when the blood vessels dilate, blood from the body cycles in and dissipates over the expanded surface area. [1]A xerocole (from Greek xēros / ˈ z ɪ r oʊ s / 'dry' and Latin col(ere) 'to inhabit'), [2] [3] [4] is a general term referring to any animal that is adapted to live in a desert.
Vulpes is a genus of the sub-family Caninae.The members of this genus are colloquially referred to as true foxes, meaning they form a proper clade.The word "fox" occurs in the common names of all species of the genus, but also appears in the common names of other canid species.
The project also bred the least-tameable foxes to study social behavior in canids. These foxes avoided human contact, as do their wild behavioral phenotypes. [3] [21] Detailed genetic and physiological studies on the foxes have been done by Trut and colleagues.
They vary in size from the fennec fox, which may be as little as 24 cm (9.4 in) in length and weigh 0.6 kg (1.3 lb), [20] to the gray wolf, which may be up to 160 cm (63 in) long, and can weigh up to 79 kg (174 lb). [21] Only a few species are arboreal—the gray fox, the closely related island fox [22] and the raccoon dog habitually climb trees.
Fennec foxes (and other species of fox adapted to life in the desert, such as kit foxes), for example, have large ears and short fur to aid in keeping the body cool. [ 2 ] [ 9 ] Arctic foxes , on the other hand, have tiny ears and short limbs as well as thick, insulating fur, which aid in keeping the body warm. [ 10 ]
The kit fox is one of the smallest species of the family Canidae found in North America. It has large ears, between 71 and 95 mm (2.8 and 3.7 in), that help the fox dissipate heat and give it exceptional hearing (much like those of the fennec fox). This species exhibits little sexual dimorphism, with the male being slightly larger. The average ...