{"id":22825,"date":"2024-04-10T05:28:15","date_gmt":"2024-04-10T05:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/10\/mans-best-friend-was-once-a-fox-study-suggests\/"},"modified":"2024-04-10T05:28:15","modified_gmt":"2024-04-10T05:28:15","slug":"mans-best-friend-was-once-a-fox-study-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/10\/mans-best-friend-was-once-a-fox-study-suggests\/","title":{"rendered":"Man’s best friend was once a fox, study suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Man’s<\/div>


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Dogs are man’s best friend nowadays but humans once kept an unexpected pet, new research suggests. <\/p>\n

In what has been labelled a “rare and unusual find,” scientists have discovered the bones of an extinct fox and found evidence that the animal shared “a strong bond” with humans.<\/p>\n

Analysis of 1,500-year-old skeletal remains from a burial site in Argentinian Patagonia suggest the Dusicyon avus, or the Falkland Islands wolf, was “a valuable companion to the hunter-gatherer groups”.<\/p>\n

The bones are from a single animal while the human remains buried with it come from 21 individuals.<\/p>\n

A lack of cut marks on the bones suggest the animal was a pet rather than a species hunted for food, scientists said.<\/p>\n

More from Sky News:
This island is giving away its goats<\/a>
Missing dog turns up 2,00 miles from home<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The findings have been published in the Royal Society Open Science journal.<\/p>\n

Study author Dr Ophelie Lebrasseur, from the University of Oxford, added: “Its diet resembled that of the humans buried on the site rather than the diet of wild canids, including your typical Dusicyon avus.<\/p>\n

“Such a similarity in diets suggests it was either fed by the hunter-gatherers or it fed on the kitchen refuse.”<\/p>\n

The fact the fox was buried alongside humans suggests this particular animal “held personal significance,” she added.<\/p>\n

The fox would have been about the size of a German Shepherd, weighing around 10 to 15kg, and lived in open grassy areas in large parts of South America.<\/p>\n

Records suggest D. avus became extinct around 500 years ago but the reasons for its disappearance are unclear, the team said.<\/p>\n

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The arrival of dogs in Patagonia, somewhere between 700 and 900 years ago, may be a contributing factor.<\/p>\n

Whether the foxes would have been good pets is also still unclear.<\/p>\n

Dr Lebrasseur said: “Some individuals may have been less scared of humans, which may have facilitated the development of a closer bond, but we cannot currently confirm this.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Dogs are man’s best friend nowadays but humans once kept an unexpected pet, new research suggests. In what has been labelled a “rare and unusual find,” scientists have discovered the bones of an extinct fox and found evidence that the animal shared “a strong bond” with humans. Analysis of 1,500-year-old skeletal remains from a burial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/24\/03\/512x512\/skynews-gfxwhatsapppromo-gfxwhatsapp_6490206.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2750,8670,28165,250,3433],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22825"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22827,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22825\/revisions\/22827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}