A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
fennec
The fennec is the smallest fox in the world and the one with the largest ears in proportion to its body, standing about eight inches at the shoulder with ears up to six inches long. It lives in the Sahara and the deserts of North Africa and Arabia, hunts at night, digs extensive dens in sand, and can go long stretches without drinking, taking its water from what it eats.
Etymology
The name is Arabic and came into English in the late eighteenth century along with the first European descriptions. The Arabic word covers the fox, and in some usage it has been applied more broadly to small foxes generally. It is one of a small set of desert-animal names English took directly from Arabic rather than through a European language, and it kept the pronunciation nearly intact.
Notes
The ears do two jobs. They radiate heat, since they are thin, richly supplied with blood, and enormous in surface area, and they pick up the sound of insects and small animals moving under the sand. The soles of the feet are furred, which insulates against hot sand and gives traction on a loose surface.