Please excuse the low quality.
One of my favorite animals to draw are foxes. Both are stylized, experimentations. I want to go into detail, but with a limited space I'll summarize.
The top is a female expressing joy. The bottom is a male expressing fear. Both have a similar quality such as a wide eyes, but their contrasting qualities such as their ears, tail, and body position help accentuate their emotions. On the female her ears are forward, back straight, and tail upturned supporting her expression of surprise. The male is slanted a sort of "backing away" position his ears turned back, but his wide eyes tell the viewer that he is scared instead of angry.