Crab-eating Fox

Cerdocyon thous carries a misleading common name. Crabs figure in its meals mainly in seasonally flooded country such as the Venezuelan Llanos. Across the full range of the species, a review of published diet studies found fruit in a mean 62 percent of scat samples, drawn from 128 different plants, alongside insects and small vertebrates.

In the dry thorn forest of Kaa-Iya del Gran Chaco, where this one was photographed at night on a trail, the fox works through whatever fruit and insects the season provides.