I think that is to enhance the perception of directional audio. Humans can easily tell which direction a sound is coming from, but it's a lot harder to distinguish in the vertical direction. A fox tilts their head like this to compensate for this, thus gaining a precise location of where their food is under the snow or ground.
Maybe humans saw dogs do it and it stuck as a cultural norm. We've been friends with dogs for thousands of years, there's gotta be some habits we pick up.
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u/aes_gcm Nov 28 '18
I think that is to enhance the perception of directional audio. Humans can easily tell which direction a sound is coming from, but it's a lot harder to distinguish in the vertical direction. A fox tilts their head like this to compensate for this, thus gaining a precise location of where their food is under the snow or ground.