North Dakota: Feline or canine?
Feline or canine? Are you a ‘dog person’ or a ‘cat person’? Would you rather hear bow wow or meow?
Luckily, the prairie of North Dakota has something for both parties.
Dogs belong to the family Canidae and are sometimes called canids or canines. While our minds jump immediately to the canine teeth as an identifying characteristic, that’s not quite true. Cats have canine teeth too- and so do we, as a matter of fact. Ours definitely aren’t so needle-sharp as our animal friends, but exist they do.
Right here in North Dakota, we can see quite a few members of the dog family.
The ubiquitous coyote (Canis latrans) is of course everywhere. Its bigger and scarier cousin the gray wolf hasn’t been spotted in our county, according to Seabloom but has been seen in other parts of the state.
Red foxes, while looking somewhat catlike, are indeed canids. We’ll focus on the red fox because of its vibrant color.
Seabloom in his book Mammals of North Dakota claims that red foxes are one of the most widely distributed carnivores in the world. Carnivora is the order that both canids and felids belong to, among many others.
Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.
In the case of the red fox, Carnivora is the order, whereas the family is Canidae, and its genus/species epithet is Vulpes vulpes. The red fox is in the same genus as the swift fox, but not as the gray fox, both of which have been spotted in ND, but not where we stand.
Red foxes are a joy to see racing across the prairie and playing like dogs with big bushy tails if you’re lucky enough to see more than one at a time. What they are famous for, though, is their pounce, a sudden leaping spring headfirst when they spot their preyoften a rodent of some sort.
Red foxes often let other critters create their dens- like badgers and I’ve seen some in an abandoned coyote den (although that may have first been a badger’s too, it’s hard to tell).
This time of year, the brightly colored red fox is in its breeding season, and after a mere 53 days’ gestation (imagine a 53-day pregnancy!!), four to six pups are born.
Those pups don’t have their eyes open (like kittens) and are totally dependent on their mothers for about five weeks, when they begin to exit the den and are weaned after around twelve weeks. Beginning in August, the pups begin to leave the den entirely for new stomping grounds.
Have you seen a flash of red, racing across the prairie snowscape? Maybe it’s a red fox. Good places to watch for them are edges of wetlands and areas of agriculture where rodents may be found, and also in forested areas- and also just racing across the open prai- rie. Really, anywhere is a good place to look for a red fox!