I Can’t Sleep - Foxes | Peaceful Bedtime Reading for Sleep

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

Drift off with this calm bedtime reading about foxes, the clever and adaptable animals found in myths, forests, and landscapes around the world. Benjamin’s soothing narration gently explores their behavior, habitats, and cultural significance, delivered in a steady, comforting cadence. With fact-filled storytelling—no whispers, no hypnosis—this episode is designed to ease insomnia, reduce stress, and quiet restless thoughts. Perfect for sleepless nights or moments of anxiety. Press play, relax, and let your mind wander peacefully as you learn about the graceful and mysterious world of foxes. Want More? Request a Topic: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/request-a-topic Ad-Free Episodes: https://icantsleep.supportingcast.fm/ Shop Sleep-Friendly Products: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/sponsors Join the Discussion on Discord: https://discord.gg/myhGhVUhn7 This content is derived from the Wikipedia article on Foxes, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Read the full article: Wikipedia – Foxes. Happy sleeping! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a Glassbox media podcast. What if I told you that most of the modern day self-help advice you've been hearing could actually make you worse? The key to a better life isn't about feel-good gimmicks that sound catchy. The Mentally Stronger Podcast gives you access to a licensed therapist who shares science-backed tools that will actually change your life. Hi, I'm Amy Morin, psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author. In each episode, we cover research-back strategies, like how to stop relying on willpower and start creating habits for lasting change. And the five mental strength-building exercises you can do from your couch. I also speak to world-class experts like Dr. Nicole Kane, who shares how to permanently heal anxiety by addressing the root cause.

With over 200 episodes in our catalog, this podcast is for you if you're ready to crush self-doubt, conquer challenges, and become stronger than ever with therapist-approved strategies that can change your life. Listen to Mentally Stronger with Therapist Amy Morin, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast, where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled Fox. Foxes are small to medium-sized omnivorous mammals, belonging to several genera of the family canadae. They have a flattened skull, upright triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned,

and a long bushy tail. Twelve species belong to the monophyletic, true fox group of genus vulpe's. Another 25 current or extinct species are sometimes called foxes. They are part of the paraphyphaletic group of the South American foxes, or an outlying group, which consists of the bat-eared fox, gray fox, and island fox. Foxes live on every continent except Antarctica. The most common and widespread species of fox is the red fox, with about 47 recognized subspecies. The global distribution of foxes, together with their widespread reputation for cunning, has contributed to their prominence and popular culture and folklore in many societies around the world. The hunting of foxes with packs of hounds long and established pursuit in Europe,

especially in the British Isles, was exported by European settlers to various parts of the new world. The word fox comes from Old English, and derives from proto-Germanic Fuzats. This, in turn, derives from proto-Indo-European, puk, sick-haired, tail. Male foxes are known as dogs, tods, or reynards, females as vixens,

and young as cubs, pups, or kids, though the last term is not to be confused with the kit fox, a distinct species. Vixen is one of very few modern English words that retain the Middle English Southern dialectal V pronunciation instead of F, i.e. Northern English Fox versus Southern English Vox. A group of foxes is referred to as a skulk, leash, or Earth. Within the Canada, the results of DNA analysis shows several phylogenetic divisions. The fox-like canids, which include the Kit Fox, Red Fox, Cape Fox, Arctic Fox, and Fennick

Fox. The wolf-like canids including the dog, gray wolf, red wolf, eastern wolf, coyote, golden jackal, Ethiopian wolf, blackback jackal, side-stripe jackal, dull, and African wild dog. The South American canids, including the bush dog, furry fox, crab-eating fox, and maimed wolf, various monotypic taxa including the bad-eared fox, gray fox, and raccoon dog. Foxes are generally smaller than some other members of the family canadae, such as wolves and jackals. Well, they may be larger than some within the family, such as raccoon dog.

In the largest species, the Red Fox, males weigh between 4.1 and 8.7 kilograms, while the smallest species, the Phanek Fox, weighs just .7 to 1.6 kilograms. Fox features typically include a triangular face, pointed ears, an elongated rostrum, and a bushy tail. They are digi-grade, meaning they walk on their toes. Unlike most members of the family candidate, foxes have partially retractable claws. Fox vibrancy or whiskers are black. The whiskers on the muzzle known as moustacheal vibrancy average 100 to 110 millimeters long. While the whiskers everywhere else on the head average to be shorter in length, whiskers are also on the forelimbs and average four.

40 millimeters long, pointing downward and backward. Other physical characteristics vary according to habitat and adaptive significance. Fox species differ in fur color, length, and density. Coat colors range from pear white to black and white to black flecked with white or gray on the underside. Fenne foxes and other species of fox adapted to life in the desert such as kit foxes, for example, have large ears and short fur to aid in keeping the body cool. Arctic foxes, on the other hand, have tiny ears and short limbs, as well as thick, insulating fur, which aid in keeping the body warm. Red foxes, by contrast, have a typical Auburn Pelt, the tail normally ending with a white marking. A fox's coat color and texture

may vary due to the change in seasons. Fox pelts are richer and denser in the colder months, and lighter in the warmer months. To get rid of the dense winter coat, foxes molt once a year around April. The process begins from the feet, up the legs, and then along the back.

Coat color may also change as the individual ages. In the wild, the typical lifespan of a fox, one to three years, although individuals may live up to ten years. Unlike many canids, foxes are not always pack animals. Typically, they live in small family groups, but some, such as the Arctic foxes, are known to be solitary. Foxes are omnivores. Their diet is made up primarily of invertebrates, such as insects and small vertebrates, such as reptiles and birds. They may also eat eggs and vegetation.

Many species are general as predators, but some, such as the crab-eating fox, have more specialized diets. Most species of fox consume around one kilogram of food every day. Foxes cash excess food, burying it for later consumption, usually under leaves, snow, or soil. While hunting foxes tend to use a particular pouncing technique, such that they crouch down to camouflage themselves in the terrain, and then use their hind legs to leap up with great force and land on top of their chosen prey. The gray fox is one of only two canine species known to regularly climb trees. The other is the raccoon dog.

The fox's vocal repertoire is vast and includes wine, made shortly. after birth occurs at a high rate when kids are hungry and when their body temperatures are low. Whining stimulates the mother to care for her young. It also has been known to stimulate the male fox into caring for his maid and kids. Yelp. Made about 19 days later, the kids' whining turns into infantile barks, yelps, which occur heavily during play. Explosive Call At the age of about one month, the kids can emit an explosive call, which is intended to be threatening to intruders or other cubs,

a high-pitched howl. Combative Call In adults, the explosive call becomes an open-mouthed combative call during any conflict, a sharper bark, growl. An adult fox's indication to their kids to feed, or head to the adult's location. Bark

Adult foxes warn against intruders and in defense by barking. In the case of domesticated foxes, the whining seems to remain in adult individuals as a sign of excitement and submission in the presence of their owners. Foxes are often considered pests or nuisance creatures

for their opportunistic attacks on poultry and other small livestock. Fox attacks on humans are not common. Many foxes adapt well to human environments with several species classified as resident urban carnivores for their ability to sustain populations entirely within urban boundaries. Foxes in urban areas can live longer and can have smaller litter sizes than foxes in non-urban areas. Urban foxes are ubiquitous in Europe, where they show all. altered behaviors compared to non-urban foxes, including increased population density, smaller

territory, and pack foraging. Foxes have been introduced in numerous locations, with varying effects on indigenous flora and fauna. In some countries, foxes are major predators of rabbits and hens. Population oscillations of these two species were the first nonlinear oscillations studied. and led to the derivation of the Latka-Votera equation. There are many records of domesticated red foxes and others, but rarely of sustained domestication.

A recent and notable exception is the Russian silver fox, which resulted in visible and behavioral changes and a case study of an animal population modeling according to human domestication needs. The current group of domesticated silver foxes, Foxes are the result of nearly 50 years of experiments in the Soviet Union and Russia. To de novo domesticated, the silver morph of the Red Fox. This selective breeding resulted in physical and behavioral traits appearing

that are frequently seen in domestic cats, dogs, and other animals, such as pigmentation changes, floppy ears, and curly tails. Notably, the new foxes became more tame, allowing themselves to be petted, whimpering to get attention, and sniffing and licking their caretakers. Foxes are among the comparatively few mammals which have been able to adapt themselves to a certain degree to living in urban, mostly sub-urban human environments. Their omnivorous diet allows them to survive on discarded food waste, and their skidded. and often nocturnal nature means that they are often able to avoid detection, despite their larger size. Urban foxes have been identified as threats to cats and small dogs,

and for this reason there is often pressure to exclude them from these environments. The San Joaquin Kit Fox is a highly endangered species that has ironically become adapted to urban living in San Joaquin Valley and Salinas Valley of Southern California. Its diet includes mice, ground squirrels, rabbits, hairs, bird eggs, and insects, and it has claimed habitats in open areas, golf courses, draining basins, and school grounds. The fox appears in many cultures, usually in folklore. There are slight variations in their depictions.

In Western and Persian folklore, foxes are symbols of cunning and trickery, a reputation derived especially from their reputed ability to evade hunters. This is usually represented as a character possessing these traits. These traits are used on a wide variety of characters, either making them a nuisance to the story, a misunderstood hero, or a devious villain. In Asian folklore, foxes are depicted as familiar spirits possessing magic powers. Similar to in western folklore, foxes are portrayed as mischievous, usually tricking other people, with the ability to disguise as an attractive female human. Others depict them as mystical, sacred creatures

who can bring wonder or ruin. Nine-tailed foxes appear in Chinese folklore, literature, and mythology, in which, depending on the tail, they can be a good or a bad oman. The motif was eventually introduced from Chinese to Japanese and Korean cultures. The constellation Vulpecula represents a fox. Vulpecula is a faint constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for Little Fox, although it is commonly known simply as the Fox. It was identified in the 17th century and is located in the middle of the Summer Triangle. There are no stars brighter than fourth magnitude in this constellation.

The brightest star in Vulpecula is Alpha Volpeculae, a magnitude 4.44 apparent magnitude red giant had an approximate distance of 291 light years. This star is an optical binary that can be split using binoculars. The star also carries the traditional name answer, which refers to the goose, the little fox holds in its jaws. 23 Vlpeculae is the second brightest star in the constellation.

In 1967, the first Pulsar, PSR B191919-1, was discovered in Vopecula by Jocelyn Bell, supervised by Anthony Hewish in Cambridge. While they were searching for scintillation of radio signals of quasars, they observed pulses which repeated with a period of 1.3373 seconds. The terrestrial origin of the signal was ruled out because the time it took the object to reappear was a sidereal day instead of a solar day. This anomaly was finally identified as the signal of a rapidly rotating neutron star.

15 years after the first pulsar was discovered, the first millisecond pulsar, PSR B1937 plus 21, was also discovered in vulpecula, only a few degrees in the sky away from PSR B191919. plus 2.1. Vopecula is also home to HD 189-733B, one of the closest extrasolar planets studied by the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope. On the 11th of July 2007, a team led by Giovanni Tenetti published the results of their observations using the Spitzer Space Telescope,

concluding there is solid evidence for, for significant amounts of water vapor in the planet's atmosphere. Although HD 189-733B with atmospheric temperatures rising above 1,000 degrees Celsius is far from being habitable, this finding increases the likelihood that water, an essential component of life, would be found on a more Earth-like planet in the future. Also located in Volpecula is soft gamma repeater SGR, 1935 plus 2154.

In 2020, it emitted a fast radio burst, the first one to be observed in the Milky Way. The Dumbbell Nebula, M27, is a large bright planetary nebula, which was discovered by the French astronomer Charles Messier in 1764, as the very first object of its kind. It can be seen with good binoculars in a dark sky location, appearing as a dimly glowing disc,

approximately eight arc minutes in diameter. The nebula is approximately 9,800 years old. A telescope reveals its double-lobed shape, similar to that of an hourglass. Brockie's cluster, Cullander 399, is an asterism formerly thought to be an open cluster. It is also called the coat hanger because of its distinctive star pattern when view with a binoculars or a low-power telescope. NGC.7052 is an elliptical galaxy in Vpecula at a distance of 214 million light years from Earth.

It has a central dusty disk with a diameter of 3,700 light years. There is a supermassive black hole with a mass of a massive, of 300 million solar masses in its nucleus. Astronomers surmise that the disk is the remnant of a smaller galaxy that merged with NGC 7052. Jets can be seen emanating from the galaxy, and it has very strong radio emissions. This means that it is also classified as a radio galaxy.

The eastern part of Vopecula is occupied by the Hercules-Corona borealis, great wall. It is a galaxy filament with the length of 3,000 megaparsecs, making it the largest known structure in the universe. Vlpecula contains an OB association of young stars called the Vulpula OBB association, or VOLOB1. The association contains nearly 100 OB stars and over 800 young stellar objects. It lies in the galactic plane at a distance of about 2300 parsec. It contains the emission line nebula, SH 86, SH 87, and SH 88. Vol OB-1 has a length of about 100 parsecs and is sculpting many pillar-like structures in this region. In the late 17th century, the astronomer Johannes Heveulius created Vulpula.

It was originally known as Vopacula cum Ancerre, the little fox was the goose, or Vulpula Ed Ancer, the little fox and the goose, and was illustrated with a goose in the jaws of a fox. Havalius did not regard the fox and the goose to be two separate constellations, but later the stars were divided into a separate answer and vulpecula. Today they have been merged again under the name of the fox, but the goose is remembered by the name of the star, A vulpeculae, answer.

The island fox is a small fox species that is endemic to six of the eight channel islands of California. There are six subspecies, each unique to the island it lives on. reflecting its evolutionary history. They are generally docile, show little fear of humans, and are easily tamed. Island foxes played an important role in the spiritual lives of native channel islanders. They have been likely semi-domesticated as pets, used as pelts, or for other functions like pest control. Genetic and archaeological evidence indicates that the species descends from a population

of the mainland gray fox that arrived on the island around 7,300 years ago, possibly due to having been introduced to the islands by humans. Humans are almost certainly responsible for their presence on the southern islands. The species is around 25% smaller than its mainland ancestor, an example of insular dwarfism. Because the island fox is geographically isolated, it is not acquired immunity to parasites and diseases brought in from the mainland, and is especially vulnerable to those that the domestic dog may carry.

In addition, predation by the Golden Eagle and human activities devastated Fox numbers on several of the Channel Islands in the 1990s. Four Island fox subspecies were federally protected as an endangered species in 2004, and efforts to rebuild fox populations and restore the ecosystems of the channel islands are being undertaken. Radio callers are being attached to foxes in an effort to track and locate the young foxes. To date, these efforts have been largely successful. There are six subspecies of island fox, each of which is native to a specific channel island, and which evolved there independently of the others.

Foxes from each island are capable of interbreeding but have genetic and phenotypic distinctions that make them unique. For example, each subspecies has differing numbers of tail vertebrae. The fox did not persist on Anacapa Island because it has no reliable source of fresh water. Santa Barbara Island is too small to support the food needs of a viable fox population. Other names for the island fox include Coast Fox, Short-tailed Fox, Island Gray Fox, Channel Islands Fox, Channel Islands Gray Fox, California Channel Islands Fox, and Insular Gray Fox. The island fox is significantly smaller than the related gray fox and is the smallest fox in North America, averaging slightly smaller than the Swift and Kit Foxes. Typically, the head and body length is 48 to 50 centimeters, shoulder height 12 to 15 centimeters,

and the tail is 11 to 29 centimeters long, which is notably shorter than the 27 to 44 centimeters tail of the gray fox. This is due to the fact that the island fox generally has two fewer tail vertebrae than the gray fox. The island fox weighs between 1 and 2.8 kilograms. The species exhibit sexual dimorphism. The male is always larger than the female. The largest of the subspecies occurs on Santa Catalina Island and the smallest on Santa Cruz Island.

The island fox has gray fur on its head, a ruddy red coloring on its sides, white fur on its belly, throat, and the lower half of its face, and a black stripe on the dorsal surface of its face, on the dorsal surface of its tail. In general, the coat is darker and duller-hued than that of the gray fox. The island fox molds once a year between August and November. Before the first mold, pups are woolly and have a generally darker coat than adult foxes. A brown phase with the

gray and black fur of the body replaced by a sandy brown and a deeper brown may occur in the San Clemente Island and San Nicholas Island populations. It is unclear if this is a true color phase, a change that occurs with age, or possibly a change that occurs because of interactions with Apuntia cactus spines that become embedded in the pelt.