I have some fox pictures to share this week. There’s not a lot we haven’t explored about foxes here and many people are familiar with them because they are relatively harmless urban dwellers.
Foxes have adapted incredibly well to the urban environment and to human activity. Much of their activity takes place in the evening and overnight, a time when cities are mostly quiet. They thrive on our garbage, pet food, and handouts. They get used to our presence near their dens and at feeding areas, and to our absences in darkened back yards and hollow back alleyways.
Foxes are relatively small animals and are nearly as endearing as our companion canine and feline species. They are cute and pop culture has raised them up where they are now sought as pets for social media fame. And while we adore their little faces and the plethora of cartoons, stuffed toys, cards, illustrations, and Instagram posts, they are still trafficked as pets, as easy prey for “canned” hunts, and killed by the thousands for their skins.
While foxes have adapted to humans in urban centres, humans haven’t really adapted our behaviour in a way that shares our space equally. Our fear of “wildness” as something uncontrollable makes it difficult to co-exist rather than “cleanse” or eradicate a perceived threat. We prefer not to have to change our behaviour even if that means that other creatures will be afforded the luxury of living out a natural life.
In my photography I try to capture the lives and personalities of individual foxes. Each of them have their own unique experiences in their lives. Those two things together make it difficult for me to flatten them into a simple “category”; it is akin to suggesting that humans are basically the same in spite of our individual differences.
Do you think we might change the way we approach animals if we recognized them as individuals?