Urban foxes are evolving to live in towns and cities

Are some foxes changing to be more like cats and dogs?

Foxes who live in towns and cities are evolving to adapt to their environment.

That's according to a new study that says urban foxes in the UK have a different shaped snout and a smaller brain size compared to foxes living in the countryside.

This means that urban foxes are becoming more like pet cats and dogs, as a result of how they've adapted.

The research team looked at the skulls of hundreds of foxes from the city of London, and some from the surrounding countryside.

From looking at their findings, the scientists think that the urban foxes' different snout shape would allow them to search for food more easily in built-up areas.

Country foxes have slightly bigger brains and different shaped snouts to their city friends

Dr Kevin Parsons, from the University of Glasgow's Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, who led the study, said: "It turned out that the way urban and rural foxes differed matched up with a pattern of fox evolution that has occurred over millions of years between species.

"While the amount of change isn't as big, this showed that this recent evolutionary change in foxes is dependent upon deep-seated tendencies for how foxes can change.

"In other words, these changes were not caused by random mutations having random effects the way many might think evolution occurs."

Researchers from Bristol, Edinburgh and Massachusetts all took part in the study.

Could we have pet foxes in the future?

Urban foxes tend to search for food in people's gardens and bins

The scientists also discovered that their research could explain how cats and dogs became pets.

They found that the regular interactions these city foxes were having with humans, and the conditions they are living in could be similar to what happened with wild cats and dogs thousands of years ago.

Co-author Dr Andrew Kitchener, said: "Adapting to life around humans actually primes some animals for domestication."