Red fox

Following my journey through wildlife photography

Beginnings

This will be the first post of an ongoing newsletter following my journey through photography, I hope you enjoy.

I was compelled to take up wildlife photography from a trip to the Guiana Shield, a tropical rainforest northwest of the Amazon. It was something about the way everything felt alive, even that which did not move, it was like magic and I wanted to capture that. I wanted to capture the obvious brilliance and flair of animals or landscapes but perhaps even more so, the quiet, simple moments where things like the personality of a blooming flower or the way the sun combs through the feathers of a bird are the most magnificent thing you’ve ever seen. In my photography I try to harmonise the two, often in an attempt to bring out the epic of the mundane.

Almost immediately upon arriving back in the UK I scoured the internet for the most suitable camera I could afford and spent as much time outside as I possibly could. In all honesty I thought the wildlife would be boring in comparison to what I’d just experienced in Guyana but I found that the more you look, the more you see. So in my camera, among a great deal of blurry missed opportunities sits a few gems, that when I look at them it’s as if I’m back there trying to preserve a fleeting moment of incidental beauty.

This story highlights perhaps my first decent set of photos.

Regents’ neighbourhood fox

It was mid-autumn last year when I was passing through Regents park, sunlight splashed against the trees, a seemingly uneventful setting. But I was quickly proven otherwise when I saw this vixen1¹ rummaging around in a bush. I sat down to get a better shot and a few seconds later she laid down and I was able to capture that moment of quiet where she bathed contently in the afternoon glow. She was looking at a squirrel that was very unsettled by her presence, but she didn’t seem fazed by me. This puzzled me as most foxes (the ones I see at least) tend to be quite skittish around people; mere silhouettes disappearing into the night before you can get a proper look at them. I think for that reason I’d developed a sense that they were almost mythical creatures, but this made them seem a lot more real.

Coincidentally around that time I had a lecture about animal behaviour in the Anthropocene. I’ll share with you what I found most interesting.

The connection between behaviour and appearance in animals

As humans continue to urbanize the landscape, we are changing foxes natural behaviour (hunting has switched the scavenging because of all the trash we leave out on the street). This has made them bolder and more daring around us. Could this be the start of the domestication of foxes?

Foxes, wolves and other wild dogs have pointy ears, a long snout and less patterned fur than domestic dogs which tend to have floppy ears and a shorter snout. This can be seen across a range of animals from farmed goats to wild goats and pigs to wild boars. Scientists believe that these symptoms of domestic animals (domestication syndrome) could be due to changes in neural crest cell migration². Neural crest cells are cells that move around during embryological development and take on different roles, some of which form part of the adrenal gland which secretes adrenaline. Wild animals secrete a lot of adrenaline, making them more adverse to human interaction. But scientists propose that by encouraging tameness through selective breeding, domestic animals have fewer neural crest cells/ their movement during development become disrupted which leads to the features of domestication, because these cells also form parts of the face, ears and coat colour. So the resulting lower levels of adrenaline foxes and consequently their bolder behaviour could be an indication of the beginning of domestication. But (thankfully), this process takes thousands of years even when done intentionally, so for now, foxes remain wild and free.

1. any fox experts correct me if I’m wrong

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4096361/