Word: foxes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...committee were to adopt the plan when it reports to Dean Fox in February, the undergraduate student body would have to ratify it before it would go into effect, Epps added...
Dogs breed at nine months of age. Wolves wait until they are two or even three years old. Meanwhile they do the work of the pack, most notably helping care for other wolves' pups, in what Fox calls "a time of apprenticeship and service to their society." In any pack, however, unless its ranks have been seriously depleted, only one female each year gives birth to a litter. Even more notable, some studies suggest, the alpha male (or executive wolf), who makes all pack decisions and conducts the hunt, tends not to breed-perhaps because it would distract...
Wolves are killers. Precisely because of that, says Fox, they seem to be at pains to avoid killing one another. Within the pack this takes the form of ritual challenge and acts of subservience, plus carefully pursued systems of personal rights. In external affairs, packs keep to their own turf. When they hunt near the border of another pack's range, they howl out early warning systems so there will be no inadvertent confrontation. And they leave buffer zones between territories, not merely to keep the peace, but to provide safety areas where deer are allowed to breed...
...pack and wanton destruction of game will bring disaster; cooperation is necessary for survival. These conditions used to apply to man. They may again, and perhaps do now, though the book's anthropomorphic analogies are not always convincing on this point. What does come through is Fox's overwhelming love of wolves, a sense of communion with them that goes beyond words - something that anyone who has loved a large dog will understand. The most powerful words in the book, though, are Henry Beston's celebrated perception that man errs in patronizing animals as lower forms...
...photographs are remarkable. There they all are, the gray brothers, stretching, playing, howling in unison with Fox and his human children, fighting mock battles. Or just sitting, looking out at the world, with half-closed, quizzical eyes, a compelling mixture of Old Dog Tray and Ming the Merciless...