Fox (Paperback)

From the Publisher: Foxes live throughout the world in widely different habitats from forest to desert to the Arctic. What is surprising, though, is that scientists admit that very little is actually known about the lives and habits of foxes. The reason, which this book explores in depth, is that foxes are almost universally despised as being wicked. From the time of Aristotle, naturalists have succumbed to the general bias against foxes, either openly asserting that foxes are barely worthy of consideration or worrying about the health threat they pose. While this low regard is understandable, since foxes steal chickens and have a strong odour, they are strikingly beautiful animals possessed of a startling intelligence.||Throughout Europe and Asia, folk tales and myths have built up around the fox, depicting it variously as unrepentant thief and seducer, shapeshifter and deceiver, as an outlaw whose primary purpose is to disrupt human social order. The fear and loathing people feel (paradoxically mixed with fascination) toward foxes are reflected in the many fox-terms that have entered different languages. In Japan, for example, various plants are identified with fox-names to indicate how they are supposedly used by foxes in an alternate universe. The contradictory attitudes toward foxes are exemplified in America and Europe by their classification as vermin at the same time as they are preserved and propagated by foxhunters and fur trappers, and depicted as loveable furry creatures in the movies. We know very little about the fox and its habits—and our ignorance, Martin Wallen argues, is rooted in the fox’s bad reputation. Lowly, sly, and classified as vermin, foxes raid henhouses and garbage bins, spread disease, and injure domestic pets. At the same time, foxes are often considered beautiful, mysterious, and even oddly human. This book is the first to fully explore the fox as the object of both derision and fascination, from the forests of North America to the deserts of Africa to the Arctic tundra. ||Whether portrayed as an unrepentant thief, a shape-shifter, or an outlaw, the fox’s primary purpose in literature, Wallen demonstrates, is to disrupt human order. In Chinese folklore, for example, the fox becomes a cunning mistress, luring human men away from their wives. Wallen also discusses the numerous ways in which fox-related terms have entered the vernacular, from “foxy lady” to the process of “foxing,” or souring beer during fermentation. Thoughtful and illuminating, Fox shows that this lovely creature is as beguiling as it is controversial. ||