THE FENNEC FOX. 
Canis cerdo. 
Plate IV. 
The Fennec Fox is certainly one of the most interesting and elegant animals of the great carnivorous group 
to which it belongs. It is remarkable at once for its small general size, and for its enormously developed ears, 
which render it easily distinguishable from every other member of the genus Canis. 
The first writer who has spoken of the Fennec from his own examination seems to be the Swedish 
Naturalist, Skioldebrand, who met with a specimen of this Fox in captivity in Algiers, and described it in 
1T77, in the Proceedings of the Koyal Academy of Sciences of Stockholm, under the name Vu/pes minimus 
zaarensis. Our countryman Bruce who was in Algiers at the same time as Skioldebrand, likewise speaks of 
this animal in his “ Travels in Nubia and Abyssinia,” and contradicts many of the latter’s statements 
respecting it. Bruce calls it the “ Fennec,” and states that such is its universal appellation throughout Africa, 
the derivation of the name being the Phoenix or Palm tree found in the deserts to which it resorts. The 
celebrated Abyssinian traveller and Naturalist, Dr. E. Riippell, of Frankfort-on-the-Maine, sent several 
specimens of this Fox to the Senckenbergian Museum of that city, in 1824 and 1828, and a good figure and 
good description of it were first given by Dr. Cretzschmar, in the Zoological Atlas of EiippelTs Travels. 
Dr. Riippell found it in the neighbourhood of Ambukol, and in the sand-desert of Corte, extending up to the 
boundaries of Egypt. From the researches of the late Captain Loche, we are aware that it is likewise 
found in the Mzab and Souf countries to the south of Algeria. 
The Fennec is a rare animal in captivity. The specimens from which Mr. Wolf’s figures are taken, were 
received from Egypt in 1858, and lived in good health in the Society’s Gardens until destroyed by an unlucky 
accident. They have since been replaced by another pair. 
