There is a trend in our society that may be false, but undeniably settled in our minds: we like exclusivity, things that are different from the usual. This fact has also come into the world of animal lovers. That’s why, today, many people plan to have a fox as a pet.
In Animal Expert, for reasons that we will explain later, we do not recommend that anyone adopt a fox as a pet.
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Taking any wild animal, in this case a fox, out of nature is an aberration in most cases. This action is only acceptable if it is to save the life of a puppy lost by its mother by accident. Even when this happens, it is better to take the puppies to a wild animal recovery center than to stay with them and raise them at home.
Most of us do not have the knowledge to make this accidental adoption successful, whether for food, education or your specific needs.
There are farms dedicated to raising foxes to turn them into very expensive pets.
In our opinion, these animals are not currently fully adapted to live with humans. It is true that a fox can be domesticated, as demonstrated by Russian scientist Dimitry K. Belyaev in the late 1950s.
However, there is no room in this article to report all the complexity of this experiment conducted with foxes, but the summary of the result is as follows:
Of 135 foxes from fur farms, i.e. they were not wild foxes, Belyaev managed, after several generations of crosses, to have totally sweet and gentle foxes.
However, Dimitry K. Belyaev was unable to eliminate the smell of foxes and perhaps could not. It is precisely because of the pungent and fetid smell of foxes, that perhaps for thousands of years, humans have not tried to tame foxes and turn them into pets.
It is an intelligent animal, very beautiful and affectionate if domesticated, but … why did humans not incorporate it into their home, as they did with wolves and wild cats, turning them into dogs and cats?
In addition to the odor problem, foxes have other “problems”, one of which is incompatibility with other animals.
The predatory nature of foxes is annihilating. We know that if foxes enter a chicken coop, they will exterminate all the chickens, to take only one. This makes it difficult for the fox to live with other small animals such as cats or small dogs.
Larger dogs are likely to be aggressive against foxes when they recognize this ancestral enemy. Another problem is the habit of hiding the corpses of their prey: rats, rats, birds, etc., and then eat them. We believe this makes it impossible for a fox to be present in any home.
Of all that said, it is easy to infer that if you want to have a fox as a pet, it is essential that the animal lives in a large garden (minimum 250 m2), conveniently fenced and adapted so that the fox feels integrated into its surroundings.
However, we will never be sure that our fox is not trying to escape. The garden will smell very bad, as foxes mark their territory with urine and faeces. And although the fox is affectionate and wants our affection, a gland in its tail that does not have all the fox hairs, and everything that affects the animal.
A different path, which we know very superficially, but we take advantage of the circumstances to ask our readers for help and if they know any cases that let us know is the fact that there are people who buy foxes on fur farms. to save them from certain death.
We do not know if this would be the most appropriate way to adopt a fox, even if it meets all the demanding requirements mentioned above.
We know that these poor animals have a very short life, and we must also know that considerable sizes are achieved through genetic manipulation. We know that the price of these animals is one-tenth of what fox breeders charge as pets.
Our question is: if these foxes are adopted as small, will they be able to become pets? Perhaps a reader from the Scandinavian countries (where most of these farms exist) can shed light on the experiences of people who have tried to save foxes from these farms, turning them into pets.
We look forward to your feedback to complete this information
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