Fox-wolf Hybrids
Mammalian Hybrids
Red Fox
Wolf
Since dogs and wolves are often treated as conspecific, some scientists would equate wolf × fox with dog × fox, a cross for which far more evidence is available.
Although potential breeding contact between wolves and red foxes occurs in North America and Eurasia, fox-wolf hybrids are poorly attested. A brief report does, however, appear in Isis: Zeitschrift für alle naturwissenschaftlichen Liebhabereien (1881, no. 6, p. 48). It reads as follows: “In the royal Lippe-Schaumburg forests of Darda in Hungary recently, an animal was killed that was initially thought to be a very strong fox. A closer examination of this interesting
This single brief second-hand account is apparently the only even somewhat reliable report of this cross (although Heck (1932) does say that a male fox-dog hybrid produced offspring with a female wolf). There is also the more than two-century-old picture, shown below, of a supposed hybrid.
Above: A supposed fox-wolf hybrid. Illustration from a collection of drawings executed by artist Ferdinand Bauer (1760-1826) for Dr. John Sibthorp (1758-1796), which have been arranged and bound as an the unpublished manuscript bearing the title Fauna Græca Sibthorpiana or Drawings of the Animals of Greece and the Levant. The faint cursive script in the illustration reads “Has the appearance of being a hybrid between a wolf and a fox.”
Sir Walter Raleigh
One piece of hybrid trivia can be properly filed under the heading of this cross: Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618) in his History of the World (London, 1614, Ch. 7, p. 95), apparently in earnest, asserted that hybrids of all kinds were excluded from Noah’s ark in order to save space, since they could be reproduced later from their non-hybrid parents. He mentions the mule as one such hybrid excluded from the voyage, and added hyenas, which he said were the product of hybridization between fox and wolf.
Dog/maned wolf hybrids
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