By @afoxandthewolf #photography #shoutout
photos by alex geifman, who spent two months following a family of rüppell’s foxes in jerusalem’s ben shemen forest nature reserve. says geifman, “i live in the middle east on the desert’s edge. the colours are dull here, animals shy, the sky is flat and cloudless. for years i considered my country not suitable for nature photography.”
“eventually i discovered that dusty air softens the light and cloudless sky guarantees the sunset light. lack of open spaces led to the fact that animals live near by people and i can photograph them on daily basis before and after work.”
in fact, the burrow of these foxes was located close to a dirt road, and as alex explains, “because of this closeness, the foxes got used to the bypassing cars and cyclists, and i was able to capture their behavior from my car without attracting their attention at all.”
500px / Photo “oooo left a bit…” by Mark Bridger on We Heart It. http://weheartit.com/entry/39901429
npr:
As summer approaches and temperatures climb, I thought it would be fun to journey north and visit a creature that builds complex underground homes and doesn’t start shivering until temperatures get cold. Like really, really cold. Read on to discover a few facts about the arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus).
- How cold does it have to be for an arctic fox to start shivering? About −70 °C (-94 °F). The Smithsonian notes this small creature is one of “the most superbly cold-adapted mammals.”
- Those adaptations include short ears and a small muzzle, which minimize body surface area (and, by extension, possible points of heat loss). The animal even has fur on its paws to help it walk on ice.
- Foxes also stay warm thanks to their amazing multilayered coat. Scientists sometimes refer to this as “pelage” (derived from the Latin word for hair, pilus). This coat changes colors season-to-season – vacillating between grayish-brown in the summer and a striking white in the winter. Other populations have coats that are a beautiful shade of steel-bluish grey.
- Arctic foxes feed on other small critters like lemmings, voles, rodents, eggs, fish, and decaying animals.
- Their homes are generally situated in frost-free areas, often built into low mounds, or ridges of stratified sand and gravel. Dens can be massive, with dozens of entrances giving way to a complex system of underground tunnels, which can cover up to 1000 square meters.
- According to NOAA, some arctic fox dens have been used for centuries by generations of foxes.
(Image Credit (clockwise from top): Creative Commons: braerik, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons, Mark Dumont, Cloudtail the Snow Leopard / Source: Smithsonian Museum of Natural History: North American Mammals, Wikimedia Commons, NOAA: Arctic Report Card: Update for 2012, Arctic Fox)
So much cute! -Emily
