As a work within what I’m going to be calling the mythic subgenre of naturalist animal xenofiction (as coined by YouTube user Cardinal West on his excellent video detailing the history of the genre), mythic NAX for short, one of the primary appeals of a book such as Hunter’s Moon/The Foxes of Firstdark should lie in how the author incorporates real biology and behavior of the animals he’s writing about onto the fictional human-like society he’s constructing.
Thus, before we dive into the live reading on the blog, I thought it’d be good for us all to be more aware of actual fox behavior so that we may better appreciate the bits of real animal behavior incorporated into the text and recognize the artistic liberties taken by the author. I’m writing a short distillation of my preliminary research done on the following four webpages:
https://www.nwf.org/educational-resources/wildlife-guide/mammals/red-fox
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/red-fox
https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/mammals/understand-fox-behaviour/
https://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/animals/article/red-fox-behaviour-the-social-hierarchy
Obviously, as a Warriors fan, I’m not too demanding about biological accuracy in my mythic NAX novels, but I still expect the authors to incorporate it in some way. The Erin Hunter team’s portrayal of a feral cat colony may not be completely accurate but it shows in places they are at least aware of the basics of how they operate.
I’m also not a biologist nor do I have any particular knowledge of foxes, so I’m doing all this preliminary research from scratch. Obviously, I’m not going to go super in depth or go into super academic sources. This is, afterall, being done for fun.
Distillation of my research unde the cut:
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