An unknown animal has been seen in North Carolina.
LINK
What the heck is it? 
wow… thats odd.
It has a foxes ears.
Looks a lot like the red fox, but perhaps interbred with another animal of similar characteristics.
I live about 20 miles from Asheboro. The belief here agrees with the article. It’s a fox that for some reason has lost its fur.
I read in a dog book that, among dogs that descended from foxes, if there’s any white fur, there will also be white at the tail tip. The photo in the link doesn’t show the tip of the tail, so maybe that’s useless information (That’s true of most of the stuff I know.)
No dogs are descended from foxes. All dogs are genetically wolves. But they didn’t know that for sure until recently.
That canid has a fox-face, but its legs seem pretty long for a North American vulpid and it has no brush. I’m going to go provisionally with ‘a damn funny-looking dog’ until we have a specimen in hand.
It’s useless mainly because it’s inaccurate. There are no dogs desceded from foxes. All the fox species are too distantly related to dogs to produce hybrids.
Looks like a fox that had mange, we used to have a couple of them living near the shelter I used to work for that looked sorta like that.
Whatever it is, it’s a she.
Looks to be nearly ready to pup.
Some almost catlike features in the limbs & tail.
“Maybe the dingo ate your baby.”
It’s a fox that’s lost it’s hair . It looks almost identical to the way this fox would without hair, and this fox’s legs and tail are at least as long as those of the animal in the pic.
Also, if you do save the pic and use an image viewer to do a close up on the face it’s very obviously a fox face structure wise.
Looks like a (hairless) fox to me
http://www.theragens.com/photos/albums/Foxes/Red_Fox_2003-03.htm
I don’t think it should be said that it’s definitely a fox. First of all it’s bigger. Second of all it looks less fox/dog-like and more deerlike.
I’d say if it is a fox, it didn’t “lose” its hair. The animal looks healthy (not burned or diseased/mangy) and the hair is very even. Maybe it’s a fox with an incredibly rare shorthair gene?
It looks more like a fox-hybrid than a fullbred fox to me, but I’ll be damned if I know what a fox can crossbreed with.
My guess would be a photoshop makeup of several different animals, probably a fox head and a dog - the proportions dont look quite right.
Otara
The article says there have been other “odd animal” sightings in the area.
It also says this thing eats dried corn. Do foxes eat corn?
The person who0 says it eats corn is the same person who says he took the photo.
I could be wrong but it wouldnt be the first leg pull. Absent other reports of similar, the possibility has to be considered I think.
Otara
yeah, given the pictures of the foxes and not just from my memory (I was thinking foxes had shorter legs, I was wrong) Im definatly going with fox.
Foxes are quite susceptible to mange and there are several varieties, some of which that can casue near total hair loss.
Here’s an interesting factoid I found in googling “hair loss in foxes”
Those pictures look nothing like the animal in the news article.
I wondered about that too. Aren’t foxes carnivores?
This is true.
I don’t think this is the case but it can’t be dismissed.
Have you ever seen an animal with mange? I would say with near 100% certainty that the animal in that picture did not lose its hair to mange.
I think the jury is still way out on this one. I’m usually quick to debunk stuff like this but I don’t think “it’s a fox” will quite cut it in this case.
Hair loss to mange is patchy.
That thing ain’t patchy.