Foxy find

One of the ways France is atoning for its bad colonialist past is by belatedly passing laws that return the artifacts looted from its former colonies.

Assorted artifacts have been returned, ranging from art to weapons. There were also bizarre items like the palace gates from Benin, a 400-kilo tribal drum from Like Madagascar, Guinea’s government is seeking the return of several human skulls, specifically that of Boubacar Biro Barry, the last leader of the Muslim theocratic state of Fouta-Djalon, and those of his son, his brother, and his war chief, Le Monde reported.

These people were beheaded in 1896 following a battle against the French, and their heads were taken to France as trophies.

Meanwhile, a British antique collector was shocked to learn that a taxidermied “fox head” was not from the animal before it was sold by Auctioneum in its sale room in Bristol, England, on 11 August.

Upon seeing its image on the website of Auctioneum before the bidding, natural relics dealer James Cranfield learned that the 19th-century fox head with googly eyes and a cartoonish smile had two more upper incisors than the six for a fox, the New York Post (NYP) reported.

The 38-year-old confirmed this when he personally examined the preserved head before the bidding.

Cranfield then surprised Auctioneum with a winning bid of $85,000 for the fox head that had been bought by its anonymous seller for only $67 at a county fair, according to NYP.

The head did not belong to a fox but to a Tasmanian tiger, an extinct carnivorous marsupial that resembled a large dog but with a distinctive striped pattern on its back. The last Tasmanian tiger, which thrived in Australia and Papua New Guinea, died in a zoo in Tasmania in 1936, NYP reported.

As rare as the real thing are the only two mounted thylacine fox heads, but the location of the other one is unknown.