40 Fun Facts About Arctic Fox

The Arctic fox is the only native land mammal of which Atlantic island, reached over frozen sea?

Iceland had no other land mammals when people arrived: the foxes had walked there across the frozen sea at the end of the last ice age.

Arctic foxes often trail which hunter across the winter sea ice to eat scraps from its kills?

Polar bear leftovers can carry a fox through the lean months. The big hunters usually tolerate their followers but will charge one that gets too close to a meal.

Which Swedish outdoor brand, maker of the Kånken backpack, takes its name from the Arctic fox?

Fjällräven is Swedish for "the Arctic fox", and the company's fox logo often sits on the left sleeve of its jackets.

A female Arctic fox, like the female of every other fox species, goes by which name?

Vixen is one of very few modern English words that keep a southern Middle English "v" sound where northern speakers said "f", as they still do in fox.

Most Arctic foxes trade their thick white winter coat for short summer fur of which colour?

Brown summer fur hides the fox among bare rocks and plants. The change back begins in September, and the white coat is complete by November.

A resting Arctic fox curls into a ball and shields its face from the cold with what?

Its bushy tail works as a built-in blanket: wrapped round the curled-up fox, it covers the head and legs, the parts most exposed to the cold.

After detecting a rodent moving under the snow, how does an Arctic fox usually catch it?

Pouncing from above lets the fox punch straight through the crust. Its ears can pick out small animals burrowing under four or five inches of snow.

A family of Arctic foxes can eat dozens of which small rodent in a single day?

Lemmings matter so much that fox numbers rise and fall with theirs: in boom years the foxes breed freely, and in bust years many do not breed at all.

Arctic foxes belong to the same scientific family as which of these other northern animals?

Wolves, coyotes, jackals, dogs and foxes all sit in the canine family, and the Arctic fox is one of twelve living species of true fox in the genus Vulpes.

Arctic foxes usually choose dens that face which direction, to catch extra warmth from the sun?

South is where the sun climbs highest in the Arctic sky, so a den facing it stays warmer. The best sites are reused by generation after generation for decades.

Arctic foxes with coats that remain dark charcoal all year round are named after which colour?

Blue foxes make up only about a tenth of all Arctic foxes, and pups of both colour types can be born to the same mother.

In an Arctic fox family, who carries food back to the pups waiting at the den?

Both parents hunt for the young, because Arctic foxes pair up for the breeding season. The pups start eating meat at about a month old.

A tracked young Arctic fox walked from Norway's Svalbard islands over sea ice to which country?

Canada's Ellesmere Island was the end of a 3,506 km trek that took her only 76 days. On her fastest day she covered 155 km.

Besides drifting pack ice, Arctic foxes mostly live in which cold northern habitat?

Tundra is the fox's main home, though it also turns up in northern forests and has been seen on sea ice close to the North Pole.

Which larger relative is pushing north into Arctic fox territory and killing its smaller cousin?

Red fox rivals are bigger and do better as snow cover shrinks, so parts of northern Europe now allow them to be hunted where Arctic foxes used to live.

How do Arctic foxes get through the long, dark winter, when food is scarce and temperatures plunge?

Staying active all year, Arctic foxes never hibernate. They simply move around less to save energy.

Why does the Arctic fox have a shorter muzzle, legs and ears than foxes from warmer places?

To lose less heat, the fox keeps as little of itself as possible out in the cold: a compact body has less surface for warmth to escape from.

Arctic foxes denning on sea cliffs feed heavily on auklets, murres and which other seabird?

Puffins and other cliff-nesting seabirds are the staple for coastal foxes in Alaska, which depend on them the way inland foxes depend on small rodents.

For about their first two weeks of life, newborn Arctic fox pups are unable to do what?

See or hear: newborn pups can do neither for about two weeks. They weigh under 100 grams at birth and first leave the den at three to four weeks old.

Among the world's carnivores, from weasels to tigers, the Arctic fox holds which record?

Largest litters of any carnivore belong to the Arctic fox: in a good rodent year a mother can give birth to as many as 18 pups, and even bigger broods are on record.

What makes long-used Arctic fox dens easy to spot from the air in summer?

Lush green plants cover old dens because generations of droppings and prey remains fertilise the soil. One study found nearly three times the plant growth of the ground nearby.

How does the IUCN Red List rate the Arctic fox's risk of extinction across its whole range?

Least concern reflects a world population of several hundred thousand foxes, even though a few regional populations have come close to dying out.

Arctic foxes are the main wild carriers of which deadly virus across the far north?

Rabies has its own Arctic strain, with this fox as its main host, and outbreaks flare up in most populations from time to time.

Which powerful member of the weasel family is a natural predator of the Arctic fox?

Wolverine ranks among the fox's natural enemies. It is the largest land-living member of the weasel family and famously fierce for its size.

A group of foxes, Arctic foxes included, may be called a leash, an earth or which other word?

Skulk is a traditional collective noun for foxes, yet Arctic foxes spend midwinter mostly alone, gathering only around a large carcass.

What do Arctic foxes build up each autumn, sometimes raising their body weight by more than half?

Fat reserves work as both a larder and an extra layer against the cold, carrying the fox through the weeks when prey is hard to find.

Caught in a blizzard, an Arctic fox may make a quick shelter by doing what?

Digging into a snowbank gets the fox out of the wind quickly. The rest of the time it rests in underground dens dug into banks and hillsides.

Why do Arctic foxes prefer large, maze-like dens that have many separate entrances?

To escape predators, a fox needs a choice of exits. The biggest dens are tunnel networks covering as much as 1,000 square metres.

Arctic foxes with dark year-round coats mostly live in which setting, where the colour blends in?

Rocky coasts hide a dark coat against cliffs and boulders, and the steady food supply there lets these foxes raise five or six pups every year.

Each spring, Arctic foxes dig into snow lairs on the sea ice to hunt the pups of which animal?

Ringed seal pups are born in snow dens above the ice and are nearly helpless there, and a fox can smell a lair buried under 150 cm of snow.

Arctic foxes were found to bury up to 97% of the eggs they take from which bird's colonies?

Snow goose eggs keep so well in the cold ground that foxes dig them up all winter, and tests show one can still be eaten a year later.

Which naturalist gave the Arctic fox its first scientific name, Canis lagopus, back in 1758?

Carl Linnaeus placed the fox in the dog genus Canis, working from a specimen collected in Lapland; it now sits in Vulpes with most other foxes.

The Arctic fox's species name, lagopus, comes from the Greek for what, a nod to its furry soles?

Hare foot fits because thick fur covers the pads of the fox's paws, much as it does on hares that live in cold climates.

Fossils suggest the ancestors of the Arctic fox first adapted to cold in which far-off region?

Tibet is where a fossil fox three to five million years old turned up, on a plateau then as cold as today's far north. It is thought to be the Arctic fox's ancestor.

DNA evidence makes which big-eared fox of hot, dry country the Arctic fox's closest living relative?

Kit fox and Arctic fox lines split less than a million years ago, though one now lives in desert heat and the other on frozen ground and sea ice.

Arctic foxes in Alaska often make a den by enlarging burrows first dug by which smaller animal?

Ground squirrels start the tunnels, and the fox widens them into a den with several entrances that can run 6 to 12 feet underground.

A male Arctic fox, like any male fox, can be called a dog, a tod or which storybook name?

Reynard is the trickster hero of medieval beast fables, so popular in France that renard replaced the older French word for fox.

Arctic foxes often dig their dens into eskers, long gravel ridges left behind by what?

Glaciers leave these winding ridges of sand and gravel when they retreat, and the raised, frost-free ground is ideal for a den.

In Finnish folklore, sparks thrown up by a running fox in Lapland create which Arctic sky spectacle?

Northern lights are still called revontulet, or "fox's fires", in Finnish, after the tale of a fire-fox whose coat throws off sparks as it runs.

The winter coat of the Arctic fox is credited with which record among all mammals?

Best insulation comes from a dense, layered coat: about 70% of it is fine underfur, and it grows more than twice as thick for winter.