THE BAT-EARED FOX
Classification
Order: Carnivora
Family: Canidae
Genus: Otocygon
Species: Megalotis
Bat-eared foxes are small, fox-like predators that can only be found in southern and eastern
However the dog-like predators are assigned their own genus because bat-eared foxes have a different teeth pattern than real dogs, jackals and foxes.
They prefer bush and grass savannah with soft sandy soil and open spaces.
Their diet consists mainly of insects, preferably harvester termites, but they also like scorpions, small reptiles like lizards and geckos, mice and birds as big as a sparrow.
Bat-eared foxes can be easily recognised by the pointed snout and dark brown eyes, the slim black legs and the bushy tail with a black tip.
However, particularly noticeable are their huge ears that can jut out up to 13 cm above the head.
If one observes bat-eared foxes for a little longer, one notices their upward arched back and the slightly higher hindquarters.
This impression is strengthened because bat-eared foxes walk with a slightly to greatly lowered head when they are hunting their preferred prey. At dawn or dusk when practically only the outline of the animals can be recognised, it is particularly this upward arched back that makes it possible to distinguish the bat-eared fox from the hardly bigger black-backed jackal. An important distinguishing feature for the bat-eared fox because the black-backed jackal is very unpopular among sheep and goat breeders because of its preference for lamb.
Although bat-eared foxes belong to the dog-like predatory species they are not able to kill anything larger than small birds or mice. Not only their protruding ears but also their teeth and jawbone joint are adapted to their predominantly insectivorous diet.
The molar teeth of the bat-eared fox do not form the carnassial scissors normal for other predators and are more like multiple cusp molars. Special changes in the jawbone joint allow a quick opening and closing of the mouth but little lateral movement. This allows the bat-eared fox a quick crushing of hard-shelled insects but not a cutting or shearing of large pieces of meat.
The activity of bat-eared foxes is determined by the season and the food supply. In the hot summer months, they are usually not active until after sunset whereas they also hunt in the daytime in the cool winter weeks.
The food supply, i.e. the sufficient availability of insects and reptiles is particularly determined by the amount of rain per rainy season. The less rain, the less insects there are and bat-eared foxes must then hunt longer in order to get enough to eat, particularly during the dry winter months. This may be why bat-eared foxes are not territorial animals an
d wander with the rain, i.e. follow the insects.
Bat-eared foxes are family animals, they stay with their partner for life and jointly rear their offspring.
After a gestation period of about two months, usually four cubs are born at the end of October in a burrow. Bat-eared foxes open their eyes a few days after the birth and leave the protection of the den for the first time when they are two weeks old.
Although young bat-eared foxes are suckled by their mother for a long time, they show an early interest for insects and other small animals. They listen out and grab for potential prey whenever they are not playing or sleeping.
Bat-eared foxes are born with short, round ears and therefore have the typical baby face during the first few weeks until the ears have grown longer.
When the cubs are 4 to 5 weeks, the parents take them on the first of many short hunting trips. The parents then repeatedly call their offspring to them after having dug up insects and let them have the prey. And that despite the fact that bat-eared foxes do generally not tend to share their prey with others. In areas where sufficient bushes and trees offer protection, bat-eared foxes use burrows only for the birth and the rearing of the cubs during the first three months. Thereafter the family increasingly spends the hot daytime hours in the shadow of bushes until the burrow is given up completely at some time.
This is because bat-eared foxes have to travel long distances after the end of the rainy season in order to find enough food. Sometimes, the family splits up at night and does not get together again until the following morning.
Bat-eared foxes are fully grown at five months of age and reach sexual maturity in the first year. The family normally splits up in June, when the young animals find their own partner during one of their hunting trips. If this is not the case, the parent animals leave them and let their offspring have the area around the burrow. In this situation, the offspring, particularly of the same sex, often pair up until both have found their own partner. 
Observing a single bat-eared fox is rather rare because they are not at all loners. Alone, bat-eared foxes are frightened, shy and insecure.
Bat-eared foxes must therefore be at least one of a pair in order to feel good.
Even if the partner is of another animal species.
WE ARE LEARNING TO UNDERSTAND ANIMALS
Observing wild animals in their natural environment is a wonderful but not an easy task. The research objects all too often avoid the observation. Another problem is the limits of one’s own receptiveness, when the human eye or ear misses what appears to be so obvious to animals. 
In such situations, we are pleased to have technical aids, like photo camera or video camera, which are irreplaceable for all fieldwork. This is particularly true because it is frequently only possible to try to ascertain what was missed from the behaviour of the animals afterwards with the aid of photo or video material.
If one wants to learn something about the language of an animal species, one has to first become familiar with their behaviour and habitat because the communication of animals does not just consist of vocal sound, body posture and urine marks and is usually made as a reaction to a change in the environment. One must therefore not just observe a single animal but the whole situation and that from the view of the observed animal and not one’s own view.
A sound expression can be recognised, for example, as a warning call, when it is a reaction to a change in the environment that appears threatening for the animal species and causes a corresponding flight or defence reaction among family members.
However, one should not forget that inexperienced young animals often assess their environment and dangers differently than experienced parent animals.
Furthermore, wild animals are also individuals with individually different experience and animals of the same age and species can therefore react differently to certain situations and this can then also be reflected in their communication.
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LANGUAGE OF BAT-EARED FOXES
Like other animal species, bat-eared foxes communicate not only by exchanging sounds but also by a combination of vocal sounds and body posture. They also use scent to bridge long distances. This is noticeable when observing bat-eared foxes because of the frequent urine marking.
For humans, bat-eared foxes are not noticeable or loud animals. They do not say much and do not howl loudly during the African night like jackals do. Their yelping, with which they remain in contact with each other is hardly audible for humans and can easily be drowned out by bird twitter.
The vocal sounds of bar-eared foxes can be divided into yelps, growls, grunts and a single bark. They only emit a heartrending scream in an extreme emergency or fear of death.
These sounds can be combined with different body postures to have various meanings. The yelping, which usually sounds the same to humans, has different meanings for bat-eared foxes. This can be seen from the various reactions that follow and is particularly apparent in the communication between parent animals and their cubs.
Bat-eared foxes predominantly use the head with the large ears, the back with the erectable bristle and their bushy tail for their body language. The ears are very movable and are used in numerous ways for communications, like domestic cats do. The tail is either left hanging limp, held like an inverted ‘U’ or pointed straight to the rear.
Unlike dogs, bat-eared foxes do not actually wag their tails.
This can only be observed during relaxed playing. On the other hand, the communication with cats is much better.
COMMUNICATION WITHIN THE FAMILY LIFE
Young bat-eared foxes spend the first two weeks of their life in the safety of the den. They open their eyes after only a few days and start to react to changes in light and movement at the den entrance.
However, if they are not accompanied by the yelping of the parents they quickly disappear into the depth of the burrow and can then not be seen or heard until they are called by the parents.
After about 2 weeks, the cubs, which then still have round ears, explore the world above the burrow for the first time. They initially stay close to the entrance before conquering the rest of the African bush in small inquisitive steps.
Young bat-eared foxes only leave the safety of the burrow with a careful observation of their surroundings. Mostly as answer to the call of the mother, the bravest cub sticks its head out first and listens out for danger with upright ears.
If it appears safe, the other push their way forward to the entrance and then one can often see, for a short moment, all the cubs standing next to each other at the entrance looking out into the world.
If the cubs are then, or during play, disturbed by a quick movement or strange sound, one of them emits a single bark. This is the warning call of the cubs that causes all of them to flee, the quickest way, to the safety of the den. Bat-eared fox cubs are generally very nervous, they warn each other and even flee if the parent animals show no unrest.
However, there is one situation in which the cubs forget the surrounding world. When the mother calls for suckling with a quiet yelp. She therefore goes right up to the den entrance for suckling during the first weeks.
On joint hunting trips, the family remains in permanent contact with the help of quiet yelp sounds. If on of the cubs loses visual and audible contact, it emits increasingly louder, complaining howls until it receives a relieving answer.
The parent animals also use the yelping to call back their roaming cubs and lead them back to the den. However, in some situations the yelping is not a call to come but to remain in the safe hiding place.
Due to their better hearing, bat-eared foxes can probably distinguish fine differences in the yelping, which humans simply do not notice. Typical is that parent animals tend to emit a longer yelp sound, whereas the cubs answer with short sounds, but this does not apply for all families.
The greeting within a family is done by nudging with the nose and teats in the fur and mutual grooming plays an important role in family life. I think it is also called bonding, but for bat-eared foxes it simply means, you belong to my family.
Stranger bat-eared foxes stare at each other rather distrustfully with low growling, laid back ears and tail pointing to the rear.
The holding of the tail like an inverted ‘U’ means excitement for bat-eared foxes.
This can be due to pleasure, for example over a particularly good prey, greeting and play.
Typical for each threat is the slightly to greatly lowered head with laid-back ears. This is often accompanied by growling or grunt sounds.
When meeting an equally strong opponent, bat-eared foxes try to convince the opponent of their superior size with the help of an arched back and bristling hair.
However, if a bat-eared fox feels inferior, it lowers its head and lies down or flees, and bat-eared foxes can flee at amazing speeds and can double back like hares.
But there are many shades between courage and fright or attack and flight, which can be impressively reproduced by bat-eared foxes and can best be seen in the playing of the cubs.
LIFE WITH FANTA AND HER OFFSPRING
As already mentioned, the above-described behaviour was ascertained from observ
ation of several bat-eared fox families on the Nanania Farm in
The progenitor of these families was the bat-eared fox vixen, Fanta, which was reared by hand and grew up with the cross-breed bitch,
The two were made familiar with their new surroundings by way of daily walks. And it therefore took only a few weeks before Fanta went roaming on her own at night.
It was on one of these trips that Fanta finally made contact with a wild partner, after which she gave birth to her first four cubs near the farmhouse in November 2002. The close observation of the cubs was made possible by the trust Fanta continued to show towards the humans she was familiar with.
This allowed not only an undreamt-of observation of the upbringing of the bat-eared foxes but also their communication.
It was also simply fantastic because this was not only Fanta’s first litter but also the first time that I was able to observe the growing-up of bat-eared fox cubs from practically the first day. The burrow that Fanta had chosen for the birth was less than 100 metres from our house.
After her first four cubs had become independent, Fanta and her partner moved a little further away from the farmhouse. My contact with her continued because of her continuing trust and the help of a transmitter collar. This was why the growing-up of the second litter could also be observed.
These four cubs, Schalk, Joy, Elsa and George also received transmitter collars at the age of 5 months.
Unfortunately, we lost contact with Fanta during the year in which the cubs of the second litter became independent because of a fault on the transmitter collar and have not seen her again since then.
But Fanta’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren, like Monty, continue to enrich our lives. And they allow us to learn something new about bat-eared foxes every day. 
The Bat-eared Fox Project asks for help