A professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, Alexander Badyaev
also happens to be an award-winning nature photographer.
Inspired by
both passions, perhaps, his curiosity was piqued by the fawn and rabbit
skeletons he would often find perched on the branches of ironwood trees
outside his home in the desert near Tucson, Arizona. “Once I discovered
that these trees are social centers of gray fox activity, I got hooked
on observing these animals and learning their biology,” he says.
As explained in the California Academy of Sciences’ magazine, bioGraphic,
the curious species first evolved more than seven million years ago in
the lush tropical forests that once enveloped the area that is now the
American Southwest. “Since that time,” notes bioGraphic, “this
anatomically distinct fox has accumulated an impressive array of
un-fox-like adaptations for life in the canopy, including primate-like
flexible wrists and cat-like paws with long, curved claws that allow it
to grip tree branches…”
What’s
that, up in the trees, leaping nimbly from branch to branch like a
squirrel?
It’s a Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), a canid that’s as
at-home in the trees as it is with all four paws on the ground. One of
only two canid species that climb trees, Gray Foxes grow long, curved
claws to scramble up into the branches.
Their diet mainly consists of
more terrestrial prey like rabbits, rodents, and other small mammals,
but their arboreal lifestyle helps them avoid larger predators of their
own, including dogs and coyotes. Gray Foxes even sleep in the trees,
denning in tree hollows as high as 30 meters off the ground.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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