Falkland Island Fox
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 Illustration by John Gerrard Keulemans (1842-1912)
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| Dusicyon australis (Kerr, 1792) |
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 Location of the Falkland Islands
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The Falkland Island Fox (Dusicyon australis, formerly named Canis antarcticus), also known as the Warrah and occasionally as the Falkland Island Wolf or Antarctic Wolf, was the only native land mammal of the Falkland Islands. This endemic canid became extinct in 1876 (on West Falkland island), the only known canid to have gone extinct in historical times. The most closely related species to the monotypic genus Dusicyon among southern hemisphere foxes is Pseudalopex griseus, the culpeo or Patagonian fox, which itself has been introduced to the Falkland Islands in modern times.
The fur of the Falkland Island Fox had a tawny colour. The tip of the tail was white. The diet is unknown. Due to the absence of native rodents on the Falklands, its diet probably consisted of ground-nesting birds such as geese and penguins, grubs and insects, as well as seashore scavenging (Allen 1942). They are sometimes said to have dwelt in burrows.
The first recorded sighting was by Capt. Strong in 1692 [1]. Louis Antoine de Bougainville, who established the first settlement in the Falkland Islands termed it a loup-renard ("fox-wolf") When Charles Darwin visited the islands in 1833 he named the species Canis antarcticus and described it as common and tame. The settlers regarded the fox as a threat to their sheep and organised poisoning and shooting on a massive scale. The absence of forests led to the speedy success of the extermination campaign. This was facilitated by the animal's tameness, as is common in insular species due to the absence of predators - trappers would lure the animal with a chunk of meat held in one hand, and kill it with a knife or stick held in the other. A live Warrah was taken to London Zoo, England in 1868, but survived only a few years. [2]. In 1880, post-extinction, Thomas Huxley classified it as related to the coyote. In 1914, Oldfield Thomas moved it into the genus Dusicyon, with the culpeo and South American foxes.
It has been speculated that the unusual distribution of this animal (the only other canine species native to oceanic islands are the Island Fox of California, and Darwin's Fox of Chile - but these habitats are not as remote as the Falklands) and some details of the skull suggest that it originally arrived with natives visiting the islands and was kept by them as a pet in a semi-domesticated state. If that is true, the progenitor form from mainland South America would have become extinct during the last Ice Age. DNA analysis of museum specimens have proved rather inconclusive as to the exact relationship of this animal, some even suggesting hybridization (during the domestication process) with a relative or progenitor of the coyote; it is not known whether this would have been biologically possible. Another possibility is that, during an Ice Age, a land bridge between Falkland islands and South America enabled its ancestors to traverse the distance. At any rate, the Falkland Island Fox is a biogeographical mystery.
It is commemorated in the Falkland Islands, by the name of one of West Falkland's rivers, the Warrah, and also on the Falkland fifty pence piece. One of the Falkland Islands' conservation magazines is also titled The Warrah. [3]
[edit] References
- Canid Specialist Group (2004). Dusicyon australis. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is listed as extinct
- G.M. Allen, Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Western Hemisphere, 1942
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. ("Falkland Islands")
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