Wildlife Center Gets Creative in Caring for Newborn Fox

Staffers in Richmond, Virginia, dress up in fox costume to keep baby from habituating to humans
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 14, 2024 9:11 AM CDT

Animals often forge a strong bond with the first creature to care for them (typically their mother), a phenomenon called imprinting. So when an abandoned baby fox showed up at Virginia's Richmond Wildlife Center shortly after it was born, staffers wanted to make sure it made the right imprint—not with humans, but with a fox. Except it wasn't an actual fox that ended up feeding the female kit, it was Melissa Stanley, the center's founder, who dressed up in a furry fox outfit to keep the juvenile from becoming too attached to her. (Catch Stanley at work in her getup here.)

"It's important to make sure that the orphans that are raised in captivity do not become imprinted upon or habituated to humans," the center said in a Facebook post showing Stanley decked out in her fox head (but wearing human clothes) during feeding time. "To prevent that, we minimize human sounds, create visual barriers, reduce handling, reduce multiple transfers amongst different facilities"—and, apparently, don vulpine-themed costumes. The AP notes that the baby fox is also seen at one point in the Facebook video draped over a stuffed fox toy.

Stanley says the 2.8-ounce kit was brought into the center on Feb. 29, after a man stumbled upon her in a Richmond alley while walking his dog. He thought it was a kitten. Center officials tried to track down the baby fox's mom, and they did find her den, but it had since been cleared out—a local grounds supervisor says the foxes had been trapped and removed. Stanley says the baby probably fell out of a trap or off of a trapper's truck. Staffers say they're going to transfer the kit to a local rehab group that has three other baby foxes in its charge, with the eventual plan to release all of them back into the wild. (More uplifting news stories.)

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