Facial Injuries In Foxes and Tail Loss

 

Zoe Webber, a Bristol based wildlife rescuer and co-lead on the Fox Deaths Project, introduced me some time ago to foxes with severe facial scarring. And by "scarring" I mean severe and not the sort of photos I would post on a public blog. In fact, even describing the wounds would qualify for a "Horror" rating.

It is odd that we see foxes with a lot of bad wounds but which, with no treatment, recover and continue doing their own thing. We see foxes losing a leg or paw but it causes no problem. In foxes it is not rare to see bits of ear missing or part of a tail. With ears it is highly likely that the bits went missing during a fight between foxes and they are quite poor attack animals and like domestic dogs have to snap and bite at each other which leads to some face injuries and those bits of missing ear.

With something like a wolf it snaps at the neck and legs to incapacitate its prey and make it unable to flee -hence why a pack of wolves can take down large prey. That is to kill and eat  while the fox is mainly defending a territory or mate and and generally does not back down so if the "competition" is determined then things can get out of hand.

I have seen facial injuries on foxes where an eye is injured or there is a wound to the head or muzzle -attack/defence wounds.  There is a certain fox in one part of England known as "Scar" and his facial injury looked raw and quite severe. However, a feeder decided to use a treatment (anti biotics)  placed in food.  Had it not been for this it is likely that Scar would not be around today as it seems that he may be blind in one eye. He is, obviously, scarred and that has not affected his life.

What Zoe Webber found were really horrific face wounds and these were why they were trapped and put down. My normal reaction was "Why put a fox down for that -treat it!" the photographs showed me why euthanasia was the only course left open. Some are probably due to the fox being hit by a car and the face damaged badly. Bacteria in the mouth as well as what a fox tends to eat appear to have worked together and developed a massive flesh eating mess (unfortunately the images stay in my mind).

There are other possible causes of the injuries but the question remains why a fox can have severe wounds on other parts of the body that, untreated, heal yet the mouth/face things get so nasty. Hopefully, a bacteriologist may one day carry out the tests needed to see what is at work. Zoe has worked hard on this project and it adds more to what we can find out about foxes their lives and deaths and I now try to maintain a record of fox facial injuries as part of the Fox Study data base.

As for missing tails. I have seen one or two foxes that have no tail or only a tiny bob and these are quite clearly the result of veterinary surgery. Some foxes have half or a quarter of a tail and as their tails are prominent it is clear some clearly avoided being hit by a car but lost tails to the vehicle wheels. Again, these injuries have healed up and the foxes continue living as normal.

Zoe's work on this matter as well as the feedback from the pathologist deserves praise and though I hope not I suspect there will be more cases -I have just learnt of another facial injury case from the Midlands so there you go.