45. Vulpes tindalosi: A Naturalist's Guide

(With no apologies at all to Frank Belknapp.)

The Tindalosian fox (V. tindalosi; V. vulpes tindalosi is now considered obsolete), also called the topologist's fox, the hyperfox, or the false-kumiho, is a para-sapient species of the Vulpes genus and one of the most widely distributed members of Carnivora, having spread into orthogonal and ideatic spaces nearby to Earth at a steady but extremely slow pace starting around 250kya from throughout the red fox (V. vulpes)'s holarctic range with at least three punctuating events in recorded history, though unlike the Rift Valley Event (peak: 2 kya), both the Salish Coast Event (peak: 11 +/- 3 kya) and the Hamheung Event (peak: 5 +/- 2 kya) were only recognized as such much later with the advent of the same modern nooscopy necessary to tell the Tindalosian fox from the otherwise generally indistinguishable red fox, its much more common cousin species.

V. tindalosi is best known for its two most notably unusual abilities of calculational sustenance and hunting abilities only marginally impeded by high-dimensional, non-Euclidean, or ideatic spaces. Like the red fox, the Tindalosian fox is an opportunistic omnivore, whose diet thus generally consists of small game, eggs, plant foods like fruit and seeds, and scavenged foods of all types. This is generally mostly replaced or at least supplemented by a combination of much more fruitful hunting in high-dimensional or non-Euclidean spaces, where even a meager harvest of the hypersmeerps, duovoles, hyper-ovoid eggs, and rich 24-cell-fruit closest to the terrestrial foods they favor all equate to a massive caloric surplus by Euclidean three-dimensional standards, or else much less effortful hunting in ideatic spaces; in most of the species, the use of this latter tactic is limited to conditions of food scarcity or other hazard despite the lesser risks of simply curling up in a den, given the minimal nutritional benefit it obtains by proving fairly simple statements of propositional logic or running straightforward arithmetic calculations, the mechanism of action for which remains unclear. Unlike the common red fox, the Tindalosian fox requires significant quantities of methylxanthines in its diet, most notably caffeine, though theophylline and theobromine can sometimes substitute. In all known cases in which a Tindalosian fox awoke to clearer sapience, this change was prefigured by an increasing taste for mathematics over terrestrial foods, especially what working mathematicians might describe as particularly elegant or powerful results.

The Tindalosian fox dispalys a durable but clear and colorless integument, which varies between 10 microns in kits and 2 millimeters in adults at its thickest points; in kits and some adults, an iridescent effect is instead on display. Its purpose is twofold: to sandwich and protect the fox orthogonally to its slice along at least 4 spatial dimensions, and to prevent ideomorph corrosion when in the Platonic realm. The Tindalosian fox's hunting is made possible by that integument, without which it would suffer void-breach outside threespace much as unprotected humans do, as well as by its keenly coupled senses of smell and magnetoception, which it sometimes relies on to the exclusion of (comparably unhelpful) 3- or 4-dimensional vision; its demonstrated ability for unusually advanced quantitative reasoning and visualization frequently substitutes for it. This is supplemented by excellent quantitative faculties, including an intuitive grasp of causality, physics (both macroscopic electromagnetic), logic, arithmetic, and topology, as well as a limited ability to move orthogonally to its realm and (similarly) rotate off-realm. The once-mythologized sharpness of its claws is now best understood as being mostly the result of a partial off-slice rotation permitting almost ideal sharpness and the actuation of force along a nonempty area of measure zero.

The Tindalosian fox is colonial and highly polygamous, raising its young collectively. This befits a creature which preferentially makes dens in spaces with either an R^4 Euclidean or H2 x R semi-hyperbolic local geometry, both of which permit sophisticated den architecture of varying types, as well as the lack of an especially binding caloric constraint on its reproduction, given the ability of any sufficiently trained and intelligent kit past the age of [REMOVED] to maintain at least a basic existence. This also means that kits are weaned quite early and can even fairly straightforwardly extend the colony's den into the surrounding ground by way of contribution, due to the plentiful room for distance-efficient volume or hypervolume containment in such spaces.

The Tindalosian fox shares a descriptor with the better-known and more dangerous Tindalosian hound, which has been known to prey on it, and it can be similarly accidentally attracted by human activities - in this case, by a sufficient density of complex mathematical activity performed by humans or other sapients. Indeed, in one infamous case on record, a pair of technicians with strong backgrounds in quantative fields - one in economics, the other in pure math - accidentally attracted an earth of Tindalosian foxes to the layer chicken farm the technicians were employed at over the course of their work, and then successfully drove them off. However, the Tindalosian fox is considered much less of a hazard to humanity, despite the traits and abilities it shares with the Tindalosian hound, owing mostly to its shy curiosity and what has been reported as "politeness". While care must be taken of their orthogonal-rending claws and para-teeth if those have been extended, and completely excluding them from otherwise-private volumes is generally prohibitively expensive, the risk to para-Euclidean void-vessels is minimal; collisions between void-vessels and Tindalosian foxes are incredibly rare and nearly always accidental, and result in varying slices (as if by infinitely sharp wire or blades) through the vessel and a variety of exotic higher-dimensional bruises, strains, sprains, orthogonal-dents, scars, or bone-breaks to the fox. Its natural enemies, along with the Tindalosian hound, are not well-documented, though the larger species of the meta-kraken genus are thought to be among them, as are Lobachevsky's hydra and hyper-oozes.

While some efforts to domesticate the Tindalosian fox have been undertaken, its capacity to move off-slice makes it extremely difficult to keep it in captivity, which effect is best achieved through appetitive enrichment toys and flavorful, caffeine-rich feed; these measures are usually sufficient to tame them, while certain smells, sounds, magnetic fields, and other unpleasant stimuli suffice to disorient or overwhelm them, rendering those volumes aversive to them. Tame Tindalosian foxes have most recently seen hobbyist and industrial success as navigation aids, watchdogs against lesser Outer Horrors, and niche applications in medical diagnostics, as well as for their evident research taste; most active math and computer science departments play host to a small colony of them.