South American fox
The South American foxes, commonly called raposa in Portuguese, or zorro in Spanish, are a genus inhabiting South America. Despite their name, they are not true foxes, but are a unique canid genus more closely related to wolves and jackals than to true foxes; some of them resemble foxes due to convergent evolution. The South American gray fox, Lycalopex griseus, is the most common species, and is known for its large ears and a highly marketable, russet-fringed pelt.
The second-oldest known fossils belonging to the genus were discovered in Chile, and date from 2.0 to 2.5 million years ago, in the mid- to late Pliocene. The Vorohué Formation of Argentina has provided older fossils, dating to the Uquian to Ensenadan.
Names
The common English word "zorro" is a loan word from Spanish, with the word originally meaning "fox". Current usage lists Pseudalopex as synonymous with Lycalopex, with the latter taking precedence. In 1895, Allen classified Pseudalopex as a subgenus of Canis, establishing the combination Canis , a name still used in the fossil record.Species
Species currently included in this genus include:| Image | Name | Common name | Distribution |
| Lycalopex culpaeus | Culpeo or Andean fox | Ecuador and Peru to the southern regions of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego | |
| Lycalopex fulvipes | Darwin's fox | Nahuelbuta National Park, the Valdivian Coastal Range in mainland Chile and Chiloé Island | |
| Lycalopex griseus | South American gray fox or chilla | Argentina and Chile | |
| Lycalopex gymnocercus | Pampas fox | northern and central Argentina, Uruguay, eastern Bolivia, Paraguay, and southern Brazil | |
| Lycalopex sechurae | Sechuran fox | west-central, northwestern Peru, including the Sechura Desert, and southwestern Ecuador | |
| Lycalopex vetulus | Hoary fox | south-central Brazil | |
| †Canis australis | Vorohué Formation, Uquian-Ensenadan Argentina |
In 1914, Oldfield Thomas established the genus Dusicyon, in which he included these zorros. They were later reclassified to Lycalopex by Langguth in 1975.
Phylogeny
The following phylogenetic tree shows the evolutionary relationships between the Lycalopex species, based on molecular analysis of mitochondrial DNA control region sequences.Relationship with humans
The zorros are hunted in Argentina for their durable, soft pelts. They are also often labelled 'lamb-killers'.In his diary of his well-known 1952 traveling with the young Che Guevara, Alberto Granado mentions talking with seasonal workers employed on vast sheep farms, who told him of a successful campaign by the ranch owners to exterminate the foxes who were preying on lambs. The ranchers offered a reward of one Argentinian peso for the body of a dead male fox and as much as five pesos for a female fox; to impoverished workers in the early 1950s, five pesos were a significant sum. Within a few years, foxes became virtually extinct in a large part of Argentina.
The Fuegian dog, also known as the Yaghan dog, was a domesticated form of the culpeo, unlike other domesticated canids which were dogs and silver foxes. This means different canid species have been domesticated multiple times by humans independently.