Friday Chat w/ Vlad
Hey, it’s Vlad. After that little “prank” Panda pulled on me last week I spent some time on the interwebs figuring out how I was going to get even with her. I looked at woopee cushions and fart spray but truth be told foxes suffer no embarrassment over their flatulence. I briefly considered purchase of the David Hasselhoff Christmas album titled “Sleigh watch”, featuring songs such as “Santa Claus, the knight rider”. I figured I could make Panda listen to it repeatedly. After additional consideration I thought this might bit TOO cruel. I want to punish Panda for her transgression, but not cause permanent emotional harm. Then, as my searching continued, I happened to come across an article discussing a family in South America who live with a fox they “domesticated”. Upon further examination, I found it was actually an animal called a Culpeo, sometimes called an Andean fox. So I have two issues with this. In order to explain Vlad here will need to put on his wildly clever intellectual “hat”.
First, domestication is not something you do to an individual animal, it is something you do to a population of animals by selectively breeding for a particular trait. If you take in a young wild animal and expose it to things it will not encounter in the wild, you are taming that animal, but not domesticating it.
Second problem. The South American “foxes” are not true foxes. I am a true fox. S. American foxes are fake foxes, counterfeit foxes, sham foxes..not foxes at all. We are all Canids however. 40 million years ago the canid family evolved in N. America. Originally there were 3 sub families, two went extinct leaving only the Caninae. All modern Canids belong to this sub family. About 10 million years ago the Caninae sub family split into the Canis and Vulpes genera. The Canis genus contains wolves, dogs, coyotes and jackals, while Vulpes contains yours truly...the true foxes. Only later when members of the Canis genus got to S America did the fake foxes evolve, so they are more closely related to Canis than Vulpes. Follow me? Sorry to get all scholastic on you, but I have to protect my brand. True foxes rule.
Vlad out.