Dogs, wolves and foxes | Canidae

Hondachtigen | Cánidos

Built to wear their prey down: long legs, a deep narrow chest and digitigrade feet with four bearing toes and blunt claws that cannot be drawn in and that give grip but are useless as weapons. The muzzle is long, and behind the shearing teeth the rear cheekteeth stay broad and cusped, so the family can also live on fruit, beetles and refuse — a set of teeth that both cuts and crushes. Smell is the leading sense, over a very large and finely furnished surface, and the erect ears turn independently. There is a great deal of signalling: howling, barking, yapping and whining, and beyond that scent marking with urine and droppings at fixed places. Once a year a litter of blind helpless pups is born in an earth; the pair stays together, and in several species the young of the previous year help to rear them.