An exquisite engraving from Land and Water depicting what Germany's two-tailed fox from 1734 may
have looked like in life, and which I have lightly tinted here for purely aesthetic
reasons (public domain)
During more than three decades as a
full-time cryptozoologist and animal anomalist, I have received my fair share
of intriguing, unexpected communications, but one of the most interesting and
unusual of these arrived very recently, in the form of an email from a correspondent
(who wishes to remain anonymous) on behalf of his son, asking me if I had ever
encountered any real-life reports of foxes with two tails.
As it so happens, I had. Delving deep
into my archives, I dragged out a 19th-Century periodical report
that I'd had on file for almost 30 years, documenting just such a creature and
even including an engraving of what it may have looked like in life (which is
the picture that opens this present ShukerNature blog article of mine), but I
had never done anything with it.
Consequently, I lost no time in scanning
this long-neglected account and emailing it to my correspondent. Moreover, this
in turn inspired me to document it on ShukerNature – so here it is.
Portrait
from 1880 of Frank Buckland (public domain)
Published in the 6 May 1876 issue of the
British nature periodical Land and Water (vol
21, p 338), the report in question had been written by none other than eminent
English zoologist and natural historian Frank Buckland (1826-1888), who (rather
like me) had always been fascinated by the more eccentric examples to be found
among the vast diversity of Nature. Here is what he wrote:
FOX WITH TWO
BRUSHES…
Our esteemed
correspondent, "C.," has been kind enough to send tracings of some
remarkable drawings that occur in Ridinger's celebrated work. About 150 years
ago, this wonderful artist brought out his celebrated copperplates or etchings,
of which the following are considered the best: Eight plates of wild animals;
forty plates of observations of wild animals; fables of animals, sixteen
plates; hunting of animals of the chase by dogs, eight plates; Paradise, in
twelve plates. I confess I was rather astonished to see that there had ever
existed such a thing as a fox with two brushes. Ridinger, however, must have
had some good authority for giving the portrait of this curious animal.
"C." writes as follows, quoting
probably from Ridinger: "The fox was killed on the 14th
February, 1734, in the Orannenberger [=Oranienburg] Forest, four German miles
from Berlin. The skin was kept for the sake of its rarity, at the Royal Museum
of Art and Natural Science (Konigliche Kunst und Naturalien Kammer). Perhaps
your correspondent, "B.W.," would be able to tell us if there is
still at the Royal Museum any record of this skin."
And here, for its historical worth, is a
scan of Buckland's published report as it appeared in Land and Water, including Ridinger's engraving of this
extraordinary animal:
Frank
Buckland's Land and Water report of 6
May 1876, containing a specially-created engraving portraying the likely appearance of the two-tailed fox killed in Germany on 14 February 1734 and reported by Ridinger - click it to enlarge for reading purposes (public domain)
Ridinger, incidentally, was the
celebrated German painter, engraver, and publisher Johann Elias Ridinger
(1698-1767). He was extremely famous for his beautiful, life-like engravings of
animals, as well as hunting scenes, culminating in his superlative,
inordinately sumptuous tome Ridinger's
Coloured Animal Kingdom.
Ridinger's original 18th-Century engraving of the two-tailed fox - click it to enlarge for reading purposes (public domain)
Although the concept of a fox with two
tails (i.e. a dicaudate or bicaudate fox, to cite the technical terms given to this
particular teratological condition) may initially seem highly implausible if
not downright impossible, in reality such an occurrence can be readily
explained – nothing more dramatic, in fact, than the result of a freak longitudinal
splitting of the embryonic tail bud during the fox foetus's development, yielding
two tails united at their base. Although this is the only case of a dicaudate fox
that I have on file, I have records of other dicaudate individuals from a wide range
of different species.
As for this German vulpine example's skin,
conversely: sadly, the chances are that it no longer exists. This is because
the procedures available back in the 18th Century for preserving
animal skins were generally not sufficiently advanced to guarantee their long-term
survival, so that they eventually disintegrated or were devoured by bugs.
Nevertheless,
it would be interesting to know if at least an official record or other
documentation of it still exists at the above-mentioned Royal Museum –
something that my German friends and colleagues may like to look into for me??
A mezzotint
of Johann Elias Ridinger, dating from c.1750 (public domain)
A fox with two tails? That must be twice as cunning as a regular fox ;)
ReplyDelete