What Happened to Vera Vixen?

 

What Happened to Vera Vixen?

by Nina Munteanu

 

It’s late December in the old-growth riparian forest of Jackson Creek, Ontario. A light snow is falling on the cedars and pines. My footfalls crunch over a frozen sponge of litter and loam as I maneuver around large boulder erratics and tall cedars trees that creak and sway in the brisk winter wind. I head down the slope to the creek which gurgles and chortles. Occasionally, the ice cracks and booms like a designer rearranging furniture. 

 

I’ve been following the icing of Jackson Creek. Huge ice “islands” have formed over boulders, creating new channels for the freezing water to coarse around. I stop near a small tributary of the river to study the formation of ice “pearls” on either side of an ice-formed channel. I venture out onto an ice shelf and set up my small tripod to take slow shots of water magic. 

 

Breathing hard from my efforts and satisfied with the shots I’d taken, I stand up and step back from shore. It’s then, as I look down to where I’ve placed my feet, that I see it: a small white “rock”—

 

No! A skull! 

 

Embedded in the frozen leaf litter and ground, not more than several centimetres from the frozen shore of the river, lies an animal skull with a long snout. It’s the size of my hand. How did I manage not to step on it and crush it with all my tramping there? I must have stepped past it several times to get to my photo op. I bend low to get a better look. What is it doing there? Who—or what—had brought it there, depositing it on the creek shore?

 

Excited, I return the following day with a ruler to measure it and a trowel and some hot water to help me pull it out of the ground for better examination. A light snow has fallen the night before but the top of the skull is still visible. I remove the snow and the skull comes out of the ground easily, revealing several back teeth still embedded in it. While the skull is mostly intact, the lower jaw is missing and a loose tooth lies on the ground below it. I remove my prize and bring it home. After cleaning it with some bleach, I examine it further and with the help of a naturalist friend, identify it as a red fox (Vulpes vulpes).

 

The skull measures 133 mm from end of snout to external occipital protuberance (inion). The average skull length of an adult male measures 129 to 167 mm and vixens 128-159 mm. Steve Harris in BBC’s Discover Wildlife tells us that dog foxes also tend to have broader and more domed skulls than vixens; my skull is rather sleek, I think. From this I guess that the skull belongs to an adult female, a vixen. A young vixen; statistics for fox deaths favour a young fox. 

Jake McGown-Lowe of BBC’s The One Show shares that “Fox bones are hard to find.” He had found his specimens at the edge of a wood. He then shares that, “In the countryside the main predator of foxes are farmers and gamekeepers, especially around lambing time, and the gamekeepers usually take the bodies away to dispose of.” Jackson Creek is an urban park, with thirty percent of its perimeter surrounded by urban and suburban streets of Peterborough. But sixty percent of the park is surrounded by agricultural land, sheep and cattle farms, and some marsh. 

 

What was Vera Vixen’s story? (Somewhere between bringing her home and cleaning her, I decided to name her). How did Vera meet her demise and where was the rest of her? Had the skull recently washed onshore or was it recently brought to the shore by a scavenging racoon, badger, coyote, or another fox? Or had the skull been there longer and the winter ice and water just washed away the litter to reveal the embedded skull? Was it a death of misadventure? Had Vixen drowned when Jackson Creek flooded? Or was she hit by a car at the edge of the park, torn up by scavengers and her skull brought here to eat?

Various hunters have indicated that in a temperate climate it takes several weeks to several years for decomposers (insects, fungi and bacteria) to clean a skull left in the elements of nature. Temperature, humidity, presence of insects and water play key roles in the process of skeletonization. The skull at my feet could have died as recently as the fall of 2020 and as long ago as spring of 2019 during lambing season. Had Vera been shot or poisoned (including indirectly through scavenging) as she hunted for her kits? Bristol University estimated that two thirds of the fox population die each year by predators (including humans), disease and vehicles with the single largest cause of fox mortality being through road collisions. An Oxford study corroborated this with observations that 60% of the fox population were run-over by vehicles. Apparently most of the fox deaths are the young. In their 2004 review of the red fox, David Macdonald and Jonathan Reynolds at Oxford noted that “roughly 75% of the fox population die in their first year.” Studies in Europe have also shown that three to seven-month old foxes are most susceptible to traffic collisions—associated with the cub’s increase in ranging behaviour around the den and their lack of experience and larger tendency for misadventure.

The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is one of Canada’s most widespread mammals. They live an average of 3-7 years and in a wide range of habitats that include forests, grasslands, meadows and farmland. Foxes have adapted well to urban settings and ecotones between city and wilderness; in fact, they prefer mixed vegetation communities such as edge habitats and mixed scrub and woodland. Foxes dig out dens to raise their cubs in scrubwood and among Pine trees and under sheds and buildings in the city.

 

Foxes are omnivores with a varied diet of small mammals such as voles, mice, squirrels and rabbits, and a variety of plants, berries, other fruit and nuts. They are highly athletic, agile and incredibly fast (they can run up to 48 kph). Foxes have good eyesight but very keen hearing and sense of smell; this along with their ability to move swiftly and quietly through most terrain makes them effective crepuscular (dawn and dusk) predators in open country and nocturnal hunters in areas of concentrated human habitation.

Foxes are known for pouncing on mice and other small rodents; they burrow in the snow using the earth’s magnetic field to help them hunt. Foxes have good visual acuity, capable of seeing small movements from far away and for navigating dense forests as they sprint after prey. Their most useful sense however is their ultrasonic hearing. In a 2014 study by the University of Duisburg-Essen and Czech University of Life Sciences, scientists discovered that “red foxes have the best … hearing sensitivity of any mammal. They can hear a mouse squeak from [30 metres] away.” This along with their ability to move swiftly and quietly through most terrain makes them effective crepuscular (dawn and dusk) predators in open country and nocturnal hunters in areas of concentrated human habitation.

The red fox communicates through a wide range of body language and vocalizations. Foxes use scent glands and urination to communicate their individuality through their skunk-like smell. They use scent to mark territory and show status. The smell increases during mating season. The fox vocal range spans across five octaves with at least 28 different sounds that include those for “contact” and those for “interaction.” Individual voices can be distinguished. One contact sound between two foxes approaching one another resembles the territorial call of a tawny owl. When foxes draw close together, they use a greeting warble similar to the clucking of chickens. Adults greet their kits with gruff huffing sounds.

Foxes are monogamous; they stay with the same mate throughout their life. Foxes live in family units in which both parents take equal part in raising their young. Older siblings also care for the young pups. The young kits remain with their parents at least until the fall of the year they were born in and sometimes longer, especially females. Pups are typically born from February-April. They are born blind, deaf and toothless, with dark brown fluffy fur. Mom fox stays close to guard the kits and nurse them for several weeks and the father or barren vixens feed the mothers. The kits leave the den a month after and are fully weaned by 8-10 weeks. The mother and her kits remain together until the autumn after the birth. After the kits are weaned and begin to play about the den’s entrance, Dad fox helps watch them while Mom fox gets in some hunting. If the mother dies, the father takes over caring for the kits. Kits reach adult form by seven months and some vixens reach sexual maturity by ten months—enabling them to bear their first litter at one year of age.

Red foxes help balance ecosystems by controlling population of prey animals such as rodents and rabbits. They also disperse seeds by eating fruit. Steve Hall of Adirondack Almanack reminds us that red foxes play an important ecological role:

“Now and then, vulnerable farm animals such as chickens, ducks and lamb will be taken. While farmers used to routinely trap foxes, many now realize that the fox brings far more benefit in its constant predation on crop-destroying rodents and insects, than the harm they cause in taking the occasional barnyard animal; secure enclosures for hens and [use of] guard dogs to keep the fox in the field but out of the barnyard, are the key to discouraging unwanted fox predation.”

James Fair of BBC Discover Wildlife noted that a single fox during its lifetime may earn the farmer the equivalent of £150-190 through rabbit predation. Most farmers in Wiltshire consider the fox a helpmate in reducing the pest of rabbits. Hall adds that, “Lyme disease starts with rodents… [and the red fox] eats huge quantities of rodents.”

 

Red foxes feature prominently in the folklore and mythology of human cultures. In Greek mythology, the Teumessian fox or Cadmean vixen, was a gigantic fox that was destined never to be caught. In Japanese mythology, the kitsune are fox-like spirits that possess magical abilities which increase with age and wisdom. This includes the ability to assume human form. In the Cotswolds, witches were thought to take the shape of foxes to steal butter from their neighbours. In later European folklore, Reynard the Fox symbolizes trickery and deceit. In the actual world, this translates to resourcefulness, a quick study, and swift and decisive action. And perhaps that is the true meaning of Vixen.

According to Chris Lüttichau, author of Animal Spirit Guides, fox embodies resourcefulness and daring in her quest to feed herself and her young. “Fox survives and flourishes because she is clever and adaptable; she is now found living in cities. Fox teaches us to be flexible rather than to resist change.”

With thoughts returning to my Vera Vixen, I think that perhaps she is not a young unlucky fox who met with misadventure after all; but a smart old vixen who birthed and nurtured several litters of four to six kits each spring in her den in the pine-cedar forest by Jackson Creek. Her natural death after four to seven years of a rich life in the old growth forest and marsh would have led her to a quiet place to lay herself to rest; there her corpse was ultimately found by a badger, racoon or other fox and parts of her scattered throughout the forest to decompose and feed the ecosystem. Ever the mother, Vera now feeds the forest that nurtured her and her family’s existence.

Thank you, Nina, for such a detailed discussion of your discovery! 

For those interested in more information, Nina has included a bibliography listed below. 

You can also learn more about Nina Munteanu and her book Water Is... on the website https://themeaningofwater.com/ There's more to see in the podcast "The Meaning of Writing and Water" at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN0j033hAXQ&feature=youtu.be

Bibliography:

BBC. 2014. "BBC Two - Winterwatch, Urban Fox Diary: Part 2". 23 January 2014.

BBC. 2014. "Fleet the Sussex fox breaks British walking record". 22 January 2014.

Lüttichau, Chris. 2013. “Animal Spirit Guides.” Cico Books, London, UK. 160pp.

MacDonald, D. and J. Reynolds. 2005. “Red fox (Vulpes vulpes)” IUCN Canid Specialist Group. Online

Malkemper, E. Pascal, Vaclav Topinka, and Hynek Burda. 2015. “A behavioral audiogram of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes). Hearing Research Vol. 320: 30-37: Online

Monaghan, Patricia. 2004. “The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore”. Infobase Publishing. pp. 199–200. ISBN 978-0-8160-4524-2.

The Nature Conservancy: Nature.org. “Wetlands Mammals: Red Fox.” PDF Online

 

Jack the Ripper in the News: The nature of proof, science, and credible sources

By Judy Wearing

Was Aaron Kosminski Jack the Ripper? 

Short answer: not quite sure

Long answer: This is a great case to think about how the source of information affects its believability, and how readers like us can make sense of a world where information is King but we can’t tell if the King is Truthful or not. It’s a question of the criteria we use to make judgments about who, and what, to believe.

The case: Russell Edwards has in his possession a shawl reported to be that of Jack the Ripper victim, Catherine Eddowes, who was killed just after 1 am in a public square near Whitechapel. Her throat was slit, her face mutilated, and parts of her bowels ripped out of her body. Nasty stuff. The stuff of legend, fiction, movies, books, and others’ fame and fortune. Owning a scarf purported to be from the scene of this crime is one thing, but Russell Edwards, a businessman and author, had it tested for mitochondrial DNA in a bid to find forensic evidence to lead to the murderer’s identity. Mitochondrial DNA is DNA found within the mitochondria, a component of  our body’s cells. Mitochondria are the site of energy production – like a power generating station. How this cell organelle came to contain DNA in the first place is intriguing in itself – it is thought that the organelle was once an independent living bacteria that was ingested by a larger unicellular organism that was the ancestor of all animals. But that’s an aside. The main point is that mDNA is useful in determining relatedness; it is only passed down from mother to daughter and it is relatively stable from generation to generation. Also, it can be sequenced from very small quantities of organic matter.

Human mDNA
(Mitochondrial DNA en by derivative work Shanel (talk)
Mitochondrial_DNA_de.svg translation by Knopfkind;
layout by jhc - Mitochondrial_DNA_de.svg, wiki commons)

            

Russell Edwards enlisted the help of a molecular biologist, Jari Louhelainen, who found mDNA on the shawl that was a perfect match to an ancestor of Aaron Kosminski. Aaron Kosminski, a poor Polish immigrant who ended up in a psychiatric hospital two years after the Ripper murders, was one of several main suspects in the case. The conclusion is that someone with Aaron Kosminski’s mDNA left cells on that shawl. Edwards broke the news that he had the first proof that Kosminski was the Ripper.

The problems: Not everyone has jumped on Edwards’ bandwagon. Naysayers have had plenty of comment. They point out that the shawl was not mentioned at the time of the murder, and its connection to Catherine Eddowes is not definitive. They also point out that ancestors of Kosminski have handled the shawl, so the mDNA found might not belong to Aaron himself, but one of his descendants. Or, it might indicate that Aaron had contact with Eddowes, like any number of people living in that area at that time might have. And, they point out that Aaron was not institutionalized until nearly two years after the last Ripper murder, and his mental illness does not seem to match the m.o. of a slasher and dasher. 

However, one of the most interesting issue relating Edwards’ findings, in my mind, is how he announced it: the evidence was not submitted to a scientific journal for peer review. Normally, scholarly work is reviewed by two people in the field who look for holes in the work, alternative explanations to explain the result, for faults in methods or statistics, or anything else that might make it suspect.  The system is not perfect, by any means. For one, sometimes two people in a field resist a new idea that threatens current understanding. Sometimes they miss something. Sometimes, the scientist(s) writing the paper have outright lied. The evidence of Kosminski and the shawl, however, was announced to The Daily Mail, a British newspaper whose pages are heavily filled with murder, divorce, and celebrity gossip. 

Personally, I love the paradoxes inherent in this controversy. When the news first broke, media reports spoke of the DNA evidence as relatively convincing. I went to Wikipedia for more information, and there found a much more balanced view of the story, with plenty of background information and more than enough reason to put doubt in my mind of the definitive proof of this new evidence.

Wikipedia is not generally considered a reputable source, and some teachers frown on its use in a bibliography. And yet, in my own work as a popular science author, in reading thousands upon thousands of scientific journal articles and reputable books published by reputable publishers, sometimes tracking down minute pieces of information few seemingly care about, I’ve learned that the credibility of sources are often fuzzy.   

I use Wikipedia, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. It often has excellent quality information written in an understandable way, in a breadth that is hard to match. However, I always check with secondary sources for agreement – the more important the info, the more sources I check. And I tend to look up, read, and cite the references used in Wikipedia in my work. There is some hypocrisy in our society’s view of Wikipedia as an unacceptable source of information, when books – compilations of information from elsewhere is deemed acceptable. It has amazed me to find a single piece of information, say an anecdote about the first hairdresser in history, Monsieur Champagne of 18^th century Paris, repeated in numerous books all referencing each without any reference to empirical evidence. So I treat information I read in books the same as I do information I read on Wikipedia. I use other clues to help with my judgement of its accuracy.

There is also the amateur status of Russell Edwards, which is front and centre in the media that influence judgement of this evidence. Amateurs tend to be dismissed as sources of information, and yet there are some amateur enthusiasts who have great breadth of knowledge in a particular area. I recall one particularly ‘obsessed’ amateur scholar of a group of tiny ocean creatures, foraminifera, who was the go-to person for identification. Amateurs may not carry the same biases that people entrenched in a field might. In a sense, Henry Ford was an amateur, so was Alexander Bell. Training does not always make someone smarter or better. What is interesting about this case is that Edwards’ release of his new evidence coincides with the release of his book, . Edwards is not just enhancing our understanding of history, he’s not just an amateur sleuth, he’s a businessman, and he’s profiting. His motives make his information suspect. The motives behind any source of information can be highly influential and should at all times be considered in any case where the truth is important. This is the basis of propaganda.

I’ve also read enough peer-reviewed scientific papers to know that it sometimes reviewers and authors and experiments and statistics paint an inaccurate picture. This is not criticism – it a valid, even important part of the science. It is disturbing, however, to notice that it is easy to believe information of any kind if it is presented as having a scientific basis. Science alone is not truth. Science is an endeavour of human beings. It is, however, generally founded on dedication to finding and understanding reality as closely as possible. It is the best we’ve got when it comes to understanding the natural world, including Traditional Knowledge – which is based on empirical observations passed down from generation to generation.

All of which does naught to help clear up whether Edwards’ new mDNA evidence is enough to proclaim the Ripper identified. The waters of this murder case are still muddy with doubt, with good reason. Which brings up another aspect of science in the news: just because something is not proven does not mean that it is false. The statement, “there is no conclusive evidence that Aaron Kominski was Jack the Ripper” is not the same as “Aaron Kosminski was not Jack the Ripper.” He might have been, we just don’t know enough to say so yet. I should say, I don’t know enough to believe so yet.