Valley Fox. Photo by Ben Sacks.
January 4, 2010
Valley Fox. Photo by Ben Sacks.
The Sacramento Bee reported Saturday, January 2, 2010, as summarized by the United Press International, that an intriguing discovery has taken place in California.
A subspecies of red fox living in California’s Sacramento Valley — long believed to be a non-native pest — is in fact native to the area, scientists say.
For almost 100 years the red foxes were thought to have escaped from fur farms and hunting parties in the 1900s, but they’re actually genetically different than non-native foxes elsewhere in California….They are also genetically distinct from gray foxes native across most of California….
Ben Sacks, a biology professor at the University of California-Davis, says genetic testing shows the subspecies, which he calls the Sacramento Valley red fox, is unique to lowland areas north of the American River and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
“We can now say that the foxes of the Sacramento Valley are native to California,” Sacks said.
“The fact that the evidence is pointing toward it as a native species — and a native species that we didn’t know about — is kind of an amazing development,” said Armand Gonzales, a wildlife program manager at the California Department of Fish and Game. “That doesn’t happen very often.”UPI
The native fox is visually indistinguishable from the nonnative variety. Both are about as big as a medium-sized dog: 18 to 20 inches tall, around 25 pounds, with a white-tipped tail as long as the body.
The Valley fox appears to thrive among small farms, keeping to themselves, especially around Woodland in Yolo County and Willows in Glenn County, California.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Filed under CryptoZoo News, New Species