还记得电影《疯狂动物城》里面，和狐狸“尼克”一起卖冰棍的小家伙“芬尼克”吗？它的原型就是来自非洲耳廓狐。耳廓狐生活在炎热、干燥的非洲沙漠，长长的耳朵和尾巴能帮它们散发多余的热量。耳廓狐的体长约25厘米，和小猫差不多大，是世界上最小的犬科动物之一。
Five and a half million square miles of sand.
The size of China.
The Sahara smothers six percent of the world's land.
Yet this vast, unforgiving place is home to the world's smallest wild dog, the fennec fox.
Barely the size of a walking boot, this tiny fox goes head-to-head with the desert every day.
The Sahara is filled with millions upon millions of grains of sand, and every grain acts as a radiator.
Sand absorbs heat, and the hotter it gets, the more heat it radiates.
The temperature here spirals to over 100 degrees.
In such sizzling conditions, the fennec's size matters.
A small body can shed heat faster than a large one, and to lose heat even faster, the fennec's ears act like sophisticated air conditioning units.
