British Old Foxes -Three Sub-species?

 

When The Red Paper 2022 comes out you'll see in the wolf section that some believe (like me) that the habitat Canis lupus lives in makes it a unique sub-species. We had no "island dwarfism" in wolves in the  British Isles (England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland). 

The same I believe applies to foxes in Ireland before they had to import after wiping out all of their Old foxes through hunting.

Whether they had three distinct types as in mainland Britain we do not know -yet. Working with my colleagues, and particularly LM and her museum collection, we are making inroads into getting better picture of what the Old foxes looked like and how they lived.

The Cur fox lived and had a symbiotic relationship with humans and that shaped how they live (and where possible survived). The likelihood of feeders back in the 19th/early 20th century would make the Cur a distinct sub-species and to an extent, in some areas,  habituated.

 The Mastiff or Bulldog fox lived lower down on the slopes of  hills and mountains and I think, based on later photographic evidence (c 1920s), that they were what was also known as Hill Foxes and the same applies to their being a sub-species distinct from the Cur. They lived in rough conditions and this shaped their "type".

The biggest difference was obviously the Mountain/ Greyhound fox. I still wonder whether the ones encountered in bogs and marshes were the same but until there is evidence proving that it is a big question mark.

However, the Mountain fox seems to have been the species that filled in the gap between wolf and fox almost like the coyote and jackal do in the United States and Europe respectively. It is probably why jackals and coyotes were used for hunts in Britain. 

All three were Vulpes vulpes (we believe but we really need to get DNA work carried out) but sub-types each filling a distinct niche. It is important to emphasise that no one is calling these three Old fox types three different species of fox just sub-species. This is why we really need to get DNA work carried out because that would answer a lot of questions. 

LM noticed certain things at the same time that I did (but I kept quiet as I needed confirmation from someone else) and the first is the head shape, the eyes and how they are set but also dentition which was noticeably different to modern New foxes.

LM has achieved a great deal in getting what I think are good examples of Old foxes and a collection that is unique as no other museum, local or national, in the UK has an equivalent -all foxes are circa or after 1900 and all of New foxes. LM has also acquired a fox that is very important to French natural history.

Having a collection of what we term "ancient" foxes, LM noticed something about the coats and this is something that will be noted in The Red Paper 2022 and photographs of some of the Old fox specimens will be included.

The question is where do we go after  The Red Paper 2022 ?

Firstly, it has to be made clear that this work is the culmination of work begun in 1976 which resulted in The Red Paper: Canids in 2010. That work was just around 200pp and described by some naturalists as "explosive" as it threw out a lot of what we have been taught about foxes -dogma. The current work is 360pp and includes upgraded maps, more recent British island foxes discoveries and vastly expanded on wolf section and contains colour images and maps. Obviously, as with all of my books, this one is fully referenced so that everything can be peer reviewed and built on. Also, with the previous Red Paper the fact that Western Europe had its own Old type foxes was unknown.

The follow up project will involve a lot more hands on work but we are keeping that fairly close to our chests at the moment.