Have you ever noticed that a German Shepherd Dog moves just like a fox?

Man’s First Best Friend Might Have Been A Fox

It’s a surprising find, Cambridge researcher Lisa Maher tells NPR’s Linda Wertheimer. “When we were first excavating the site, we thought it might have been a dog,” she says. It wasn’t until her team analyzed the animal’s remains that it realized it was a fox.

That the fox was a pet is only one of several possibilities, however. It may instead have had totemic or spiritual significance to the culture. But Maher’s team compared the burial site to sites from 4,000 years later, when domesticated dogs did accompany human burials. The similarities suggest “that it probably was a more emotional relationship of one particular fox to one particular person,” she says.

They are certainly much cuter than wolves.