Fennecs; Cute Desert Foxes

Did you know about these cute little foxes with ears almost as big as their face? If you don't, I am going to tell you about them, like, right now.

These creatures are called fennec fox, or with their Latin name Vulpes zerda, or simply desert fox. These bad boys are part of the canidae family (related with a lot of vicious fiend who looks nothing like them). Wikipedia provides me with their complete scientific classification.

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Carnivora
Suborder:	Caniformia
Family:	Canidae
Genus:	Vulpes
Species:	V. zerda

You can find them around North Africa, the Sinai Peninsula and the Arabian desert and can easily differentiate them from other foxes from their large ears and small body. Their nocturnal habits and physical adaptation help them deal with the searing heat of the desert environment. What physical adaptation? Well, those ears, duh! Their bat-like ears radiate body heat and help keep the foxes cool. They looked like realistic stuffed animal version of foxes with real fox ears attached, but those big ears also have their own purpose. Cool huh? In captivity, their lifespan reach fourteen years.

Fennec foxes are so small their weight normally don't reach 2 kg. Their body length are around 24 to 41 centimeters with ears that could reach half that size. Yeah, ears half the size of your body. Imagine if humans are like that. Finished? Now thank God that we aren't like that. Most fennecs are around twenty centimeters in height. Their tails can reach 31 centimeters with black tip.

They are the social type. Making adjoined dens and living in packs. And what's even better are that once they mate, they mate for life. Even if one of them dies the other wouldn't go around searching for a new partner. Beautiful.

Fennec foxes are known to be omnivores, eating plants, rodents, insects, birds, eggs, and rabbits. Just like any other desert animal they can survive long without water. They can jump high an far and this helps them catch prey and avoid being caught as prey. They could also detect things by sound. Their hearing are really good.

This is probably as much as I could tell you about them, as looking through data on internet only gained me this. If you know more about them, mind sharing?

Lunaria used :

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS!!!

1. Where can you find fennec foxes?a. deserts.b. Sinai Peninsula.
c. North Africa.
d. Arabian Desert.
e. All of the above are right.

2. What is so unique about them?
a. their small build.
b. their fur.
c. their ears.
d. choice a and b.
e. choice a and c.

3. Why did they gain the social animal title?
a. they are small.
b. they live in deserts.
c. they live in packs and make adjoined dens.
d. they live close to each other.
e. they mate for life.

4. What is fennec latin name?
a. Vulpes vulpes
b. Vulpes macrotis
c. Vulpes zerda
d. Vulpes bengalensis
e. Vulpes velox

5. What kind of eater are they?
a. meats.
b. omnivores.
c. plants, rodents, insects, birds, eggs, and rabbits.
d. vegetables.
e. insects.

IT'S HIGHLY EFFECTIVE!!

My Last Holiday

Which is quite uneventful, by the way.

We had about two weeks of free time after our report card was distributed. Mostly I didn't do anything for the rest of my holiday but two days of it was at least fun and taught me a bunch of new things. I am part of an extracurricular called TRIAS which is short for Tim Riset Astronomi or Astronomy Research Team in English. Every semester we have this thing called 'Astrocamp' where we will go hiking or something and stargazing. Not only that, we also did a lot of games and knowledge sharing.

This was my first Astrocamp experience and I can't wait for the next one already. We rented a villa at Lembang. Went there in the morning around ten o'clock (actually scheduled at nine but some of us came late) with Grab, school car and one personal car. The air at Lembang was really cold I didn't even want to take off my jacket when the sun was fully up and ablaze. First thing we did when we arrived was picking places to sleep and store our belongings. I got myself a room on the second floor of the villa and gazed out the window for a few moments, daydreaming as if I was inside a drama or something until we're called to assemble. There were a lot of people I don't know and I was getting nervous because of that. Turns out we have to introduce ourselves in order with our seating. I introduced myself near the end, after knowing that they all are outgoing and nice I could do it with ease. Probably too much ease, but that's okay since after that I got a whole bunch of senior friends. They were very casual while talking to us as if we're old friends and it feels reassuring somehow.

We are then divided into three teams, and the games begun. Each of the team had to search for things needed to make a sundial and a spectroscope. Spectroscope is this thing used to see the color spectrum from a ray of light. Everyone were pretty competitive about it, taking more items than needed, but everyone got theirs at the end. We successfully made three sundial and three spectroscope, each team contributing one. Our next event was supposedly stargazing, but of course we could only do it at night. So we had a lot of free time until then. What did we do? We played games. Not mobile games but real games like cards and uno stacko. It was super fun, the loser got their face painted with facedeco. I also got myself painted one time because I made the stacko tower fell, but I enjoyed it nevertheless.

Nighttime came and we went to Imah Noong to stargaze. Unfortunately it was cloudy at the time so we only managed to learn about telescopes and watch a video in their planetarium. There was also this unique sundial that projected shadows of numbers into some kind of stone pedestal thing. It's weird shaped and we thought it was ruined because it didn't form a full half circle but turns out it was made like that and work just fine (we tried it with our phone flashlight).

We went back into the villa and rather than sleeping most of us played more games instead. It was this game called Werewolf where one of us would be the game master and distribute roles. The game mainly have two objective. Werewolves needs to 'kill' villagers or villagers must execute all of werewolves so that one side could win. It was a great game to get to know each other and strengthen our bonds. I joined the game until 4 AM, then went down to watch a movie with a few others who didn't want to play games. We watched Kingsman 2: The Golden Circle until 6 AM― where I couldn't resist the urge to sleep anymore and fell asleep.

I woke up at 8 AM, fully refreshed even though I only slept for two hours at most. Some of us waited for the next activity, which is breakfast, by watching a friend playing this game called Far Cry Primal. It was funny and we enjoyed it a lot even though we're only watching. Then breakfast time came! We ate a lot of nuggets, sausage and corn. They are delicious! Maybe because I helped to roast the corn? I don't know.

We played with this water rocket launcher made out of pvc pipes before our study session starts. Some of us got really wet from the water. We went inside the villa again to learn about multiverse theories. It really blew my mind, I don't know where people get those ideas from and it's cool.

Somehow everything felt as if they were on fast forward. I'm kind of sad the camp ended but I also missed my parents and little brother. On the road home me and my friends joked around and ended up sleeping. We were tired but we just didn't realize it because we were with friends.

Well yes, I got to admit this is the best thing in my previous holiday because I didn't even do anything after that. Well maybe there is. I spent my new year's eve at my grandpa's. His house was at Dago Pakar, so we could see all of Bandung from his porch. The fireworks were beautiful and my grandma made a really delicious breuneboenen (even though I like my mother's cooking more).