typhlonectes:

A professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, Alexander Badyaev
also happens to be an award-winning nature photographer.

Inspired by
both passions, perhaps, his curiosity was piqued by the fawn and rabbit
skeletons he would often find perched on the branches of ironwood trees
outside his home in the desert near Tucson, Arizona. “Once I discovered
that these trees are social centers of gray fox activity, I got hooked
on observing these animals and learning their biology,” he says.

As explained in the California Academy of Sciences’ magazine, bioGraphic,
the curious species first evolved more than seven million years ago in
the lush tropical forests that once enveloped the area that is now the
American Southwest. “Since that time,” notes bioGraphic, “this
anatomically distinct fox has accumulated an impressive array of
un-fox-like adaptations for life in the canopy, including primate-like
flexible wrists and cat-like paws with long, curved claws that allow it
to grip tree branches…”

Tree-dwelling gray foxes decorate with skeletons