Officially, Sam Gaby is an economist and policy advisor but he’s been a photographer way longer. Sam has been holding a camera since he was 10 years old and even though he considers himself a hobbyist, he has captured some very fascinating animal photography shots. Like these.
The photoshoots began when Sam met the beautiful foxes in a very small town in Newfoundland, Canada, called Twillingate. One cross fox really stands out in the pictures. The partially melanistic color of this unusual animal fur looks simply magical. A long dark stripe running down its back intersects another stripe to form a cross over its shoulders, and it’s impossible to take your eyes off of this incredible fox color.
At first, the cute fox was considered to be a separate species from the red fox and was given the binomial name Canis Decassatus (the fox genus Vulpes was then commonly included in the dog genus Canis). And even after scientists concluded that they were variations of the same one, fur farmers and trappers continued to treat each red fox color form as a distinct species for quite some time.
Cross foxes are relatively common in the northern parts of North America, and comprise up to 30% of Canada’s red fox population. They were also once abundant in Idaho and Utah before being largely killed off. Some cross foxes are occasionally reported in Scandinavia but they’re very rare there. A study based on nearly 3,000 skins of the red fox in Finland found that 99% were of the reddish form, with cross foxes making up for only 0.3% of the remaining 1%.
