Foxy Highway Robbers

 

 

 A friend, Adrian, who took the photos in this interesting story about some somewhat abnormal behaviour he witnessed in province of Aragon, located in eastern Spain. Coincedentally, just  a few weeks ago I came across a David Attenborough film of elephants doing something similar in Sri Lanka.

Adrian witnessed some flagrant behaviour on a quiet road, clearly planned for the wished-for result.There appears to be a pair of foxes who work together - one jumping in front of the cars when they approach, causing the driver to stop, and the other lying twenty metres away by the side of the road and joining the other for their ill-begotten spoils, which is, of course, food.  As well as himself he has come across two different people who have witnessed the same behaviour on this stretch of road.

Whether they were brothers, sisters or a couple is not known. Perhaps they were hand reared or exhibiting learned behaviour from  parents; this is not known either. But this behaviour by foxes on this stretch of road has lasted years, and a person from the nearby town of Teruel ( near to where Adrian was stopped) had also been wallaid by the foxes, and he implied that the behaviour was long standing and thus may have been practised by subsequent generations of foxes in that area.

Adrian says that the behaviour he saw was very friendly between the two foxes, and reminded him of playful dogs rather than a dominance issue . The fact that he was nipped on the ankle when he was slow to give them food reinforces the suspicion that they have had a lot to do with humans one way or another. A local naturalist was of the opinion that they or their forbears had been reared by a local farmer. It was certainly not fighting, most likely playing together as ‘friends’ or else a pair. Neither had the white tipped tail indicative of dog foxes.

 

I will let you judge for yourself the ethics of these interactions. With foxes it seems harmless enough, and the story is a fascinating example of a normally wary animal having learnt a behaviour, and developing it to a degree of sophistication and even, perhaps, passing it on to subsequent generations. 

The film taken by the BBC crew showed a docile male elephant called Raja, who blocked the road in front of passing buses, then gently reaching with his trunk in through the open door to be fed fruity rewards, before backing away and allowing the bus to continue its journey.

 

However there are stories on the internet of Sri Lankan elephants that are deliberately blocking the roads in a similar way near a nature park in order to illicit food from people passing through in buses and private cars, and even richshaws looking decidely vulnerable as they try to swerve round the animal. Whether the interpretation that this was dangerous is valid one cannot tell, but apparently the authorities are aware of the behaviour and are considering shutting town that road to attempt to put an end of this phenomena.

There is a fluctuating line between interactions between 'wild' animals and humans. I enjoy watching the red squirrels that come to rob the bird feeders in our garden, and indeed it is quite possible to persevere so that they can come to feed from your hand, but I have never tried this - I would certainly smell too much of dogs for a squirrel to trust me.