...another Daily Wail classic(tm)
The self-hating comments are just sickening, one gets the feeling that even had the toddler been totally mullered, the crowd would've cheered for the fox here.
I guess the problem is that foxes are more than just predators --this is foremost a political and class issue, and that the reality that foxes are not as nice as the cartoons suggest is causing a lot of people a serious pain in their dogma which they fought to establish so hard for over the years against their archenemy, the toffs and the country bumpkins and their hated foxhunt.
Even the parents of the unlucky toddler state they don't want the fox to die -- it's as if a dose of forgiveness could magically make the event unhappen, and the animal had not learnt that biting humans is OK -- totally oblivious to the fact that foxes learn most of their hunting behaviour.
My hunch is that fox bites are quite common, but people tend to view them as trivial. So expect a lot more fox-bites-child news to come up as it's now on the news radar.
For those who like their math, here are some papers that should give you a good idea of the bad things that'll happen if rabies ever takes hold in London:
MODELING CONTROL OF RABIES OUTBREAKS IN RED FOX POPULATIONS TO ...
http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/receiv/FUDISS_thesis_000000000061?lang=en
And if it ever does, DEFRA's contingency plan is simple: a cull of every warmblooded animal there is in the vicinity, no appeal, not even a current rabies vaccination or keeping it exclusively indoors will save your pet(s).
Oh and it doesn't have to be an accidental release either, this basically is a huge biosecurity risk just waiting be be explored. And as an aside, I hope that the bitten toddlers have been protectively vaccinated against Rabies as a precaution. Because by the time they show symptoms (1-3 month) it'll be too late for them.
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