I have heard before that it isn’t practical to keep foxes as pets, and at this website - http://www.vickifox.com/fox_pets.php - there is an actaul fox who confirms this.
She suggests that the two main problems would be wild behaviour, and their foul stench.
Given a fox cub, could I not:
raise it with strict dog-style training
surgically nullify its scent glands(?)
and
Would this make it a more bearable companion?
It is generally frowned upon to EVER keep wild animals as pets. For more reasons than I care to go into at this moment.
The answer to your specific Q’s however, I believe is yes to all.
(1) most likely won’t work.
Foxes don’t have the tens of thousands of years of breeding for domestic traits (like trainability) that dogs do. This is why wolves do not make good pets, despite the recent fad for them. (You’ll note there’s had to be a huge number of wolf-hybrid rescue operations set up to handle all of the abandoned and abused wolf-cross-dogs after their owners discovered this the hard way.)
Foxes are also not pack animals; most dog training is based on the pack-animal mentality of dogs. Fox personality-traits would probably be a lot closer to cats, to give you a domestic animal example. Most people can’t manage to train even their domestic cats; foxes would be far worse.
There have been attempts to keep foxes domestically; they generally fail miserably. The one exception that I know of was a Russian operation that was breeding specifically for domesticable temperament.
As Phlosphr said, wild animals ARE NOT PETS.
(2) would probably work fine - since you can descent a skunk, I’d think foxes would be manageable.
I would not consider the “vickifox” site to be any sort of authority at all, myself. There is no real info there concerning actually caring for the things at all. Yes foxes do stink, but then so do skunks, and if you look you will find websites and rings of people who keep them as pets–even with scent-glands intact. Some people who keep skunks as pets feel that removing the scent glands is cruel, as it is removing their main means of defense.
There is no reason that a fox cannot be fairly domesticated, in that it will not bite and claw at you when you come near it. Much of this just has to do with regular friendly human contact. As to house-training it as well as a dog, that may not be likely. The idea that “wild animals cannot be kept as pets” is really a recent invention of the “Green” revolution and is honestly quite silly–if you look up any reference work from about 50 or more years ago, it was quite common to say as much, as long as the animals were taken when young. Dogs are the “ideal” candidates because of their natural social tendencies. Foxes look similar to dogs, but do not share the same social instincts. The main concern is if you can supply the animal’s dietary and environmental requirements year-round. Another conern would be if the animal will ever get big and strong enough to take you to pieces when you accidentally walk into a dark room and step on its tail (foxes aren’t a real hazard; they are small and light-framed).
My advice would be to find an exotic animal dealer online that sells foxes, and ask him for references, and then ask those owners about what living with one is like.
~
Well, it might although wild animals raised as pets tend to behave OK with their owner but not so well with other people.
It didn’t take terribly long to breed in the domestic temperament, either (link ). However, most people will not start a breeding program specifically designed to domesticate their wild animal of choice!
I think the realities of raising a wild animal as a pet suggest … don’t do it.
I won’t argue that a wild animal, especially a baby, can be tamed, if treated properly, so that it doesn’t usually bite/claw it’s owner.
There’s a lot of difference between a farmer in a rural environment having a tame or partly-tame animal, which is what most of the references you mention are talking about, and buying one to keep in your apartment. Until fairly recently, it wasn’t that unusual or considered particularly reprehensible for animals to be routinely and savagely abused, tortured and/or killed for human entertainment - I like to think that most people have learned better now. But I guess that’s just us “Greens”.
If you live in a very rural area, and are home almost all of the time, and want to tame a local critter, that’s one thing. Then you mostly have to worry about it losing its natural fear of people and getting into trouble. My sister (dairy farmer) had a ‘pet’ raccoon that she found as an orphaned baby - it stayed in the house as a baby, started going outside (supervised) as it grew up, and by the time it was an adult wandered as it pleased and came home for breakfast and dinner most days. Disappeared for a bit, then came home with two babies of her own. Disappeared again the next year and never came back. I’ve also known a few people who semi-tamed deer by hand-feeding them, only to lose them in the next hunting season.
It’s entirely different when you’re talking about buying a wild animal and trying to keep it in an urban/suburban setting. There is nowhere for them to roam, but they’re gonna do it; local dogs will torment them if they’re left out in the yard and when they escape; they’ll often tear up your house/stuff if you try to keep them indoors - so people end up keeping them caged all the time when they’re not supervised. If you work fulltime, that means they’re caged 18-20 hours a day, while you work & sleep, just so you can have a “cool” pet. It’s cruel. And many, many people who get wild animals as pets end up dumping them because they don’t make good pets - which is also cruel, since the poor animal never had a chance to learn to take care of itself properly. The lucky ones get put down; the incredibly fortunate few go to overburdened exotic animal shelters, where they may have a chance.
Well thank you all for your replies - I do see the point about the potential cruelty in keeping wild animals, but still think I’ll keep the idea on my list of things to do ‘if I win the lottery’ (the one I never buy tickets for…). A big garden with a well-stocked rabbit warren would probably help, have me my own little Watership Down.
For now I’ll stick with my pangolin. Damned ants’ nest does take up a lot of space though, damn it.
If you want a wild animal pet. These guys are essentially wild-although they are sociable enough around humans. They do some zany things…and they will tear your house apart (if you let them). These are the only wild animals that can really be kept as pes…but be warned, they do BITE!
Ferrets (Mustela putorius furo) are not wild animals; they have been domesticated for hundreds (some say up to 3,000) years. In fact, they are considered essentially incapable of surviving in the wild.
There is enough misinformation about ferrets out there; please don’t encourage more of it.