40 Fun Facts About Fennec Fox

The fennec fox makes its home across which vast desert?

The Sahara suits the fennec: it settles in sandier country with a more extreme climate than the region's other wild canids tend to use.

Besides tracking prey under the sand, what second job do a fennec fox's enormous ears do?

Releasing body heat keeps the fox cool, and no member of its family has bigger ears for its size: they can grow to six inches long.

Just 14 to 16 inches long, the fennec fox is the smallest wild member of which animal family?

Dogs, wolves, coyotes and jackals all sit with the foxes in the family Canidae, where a grown fennec is the lightweight at two to three pounds.

When the desert turns scorching, a fennec fox keeps cool by doing what up to 690 times a minute?

Panting is the fennec's emergency cooling system: its breathing climbs from a resting 23 breaths a minute to as many as 690.

What covers the soles of a fennec fox's feet, working like snowshoes on burning sand?

Thick fur on the footpads gives grip on loose dunes and shields the skin from ground that can be extremely hot.

Fennec foxes can go indefinitely without drinking; where does nearly all of their water come from?

Their food supplies it: juicy fruit, leaves and roots, plus the moisture in prey, mean a fennec need not visit a waterhole, though it will drink when it can.

What is true of fennec fox couples, whose males feed the female while she nurses pups?

They mate for life, and the bond is a working partnership: the male guards his partner and brings her meals through pregnancy and nursing.

Which 1943 novella, narrated by a pilot who crash-lands in the desert, features a fennec as its talking fox?

The Little Prince became Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's most successful work, selling an estimated 140 million copies and reaching more than 300 languages and dialects.

Which country, whose football team is nicknamed Les Fennecs, has the fennec fox as its national animal?

Algeria carries its national animal onto the pitch: the side known as Les Fennecs lifted the Africa Cup of Nations at home in 1990 and again in 2019.

In which Disney animated film does Finnick, a fennec fox, pose as another fox's young son in an ice-pop con?

Zootopia makes Finnick the partner of con artist Nick Wilde; dressed as a baby elephant, he helps Nick get a giant ice pop to melt down and resell.

When are wild fennec foxes most active, a habit that spares them the worst of the desert sun?

At night the fennec hunts in cooler air and saves water, helped by a reflective layer in its eyes that sharpens vision in the dark and makes them seem to glow.

What kind of home does a fennec fox family live in, sometimes with up to 15 entrances?

A burrow in the sand can spread over 1,300 square feet in firm ground, and neighboring families sometimes link theirs together.

Besides camouflage, what job does a fennec fox's pale sandy coat do during the hottest hours?

Reflects sunlight: that is the daytime job, and the same long coat holds in warmth when the desert turns cold. No fox species is paler.

A fennec fox eats rodents, lizards, insects, eggs, fruit and roots; which word describes that kind of eater?

Omnivore is the word, and zoo menus show it: San Diego Zoo feeds its fennecs kibble, meat and mixed vegetables, with insects as a treat.

A female fennec fox goes by which name, the same word used for a female red fox?

Vixen is one of the few modern English words to keep an old southern dialect 'v' in place of 'f', which is why it pairs with the word fox.

Fennec foxes live in family groups of up to ten; which collective noun is traditionally used for foxes?

A skulk is the best-known term, though a group of foxes may also be called a leash or an earth.

Although only about eight inches tall at the shoulder, the fennec fox is surprisingly good at which skill?

Jumping is its party trick: from a standing start an adult can spring two feet or more into the air, several times its own shoulder height.

Fennec foxes bark, yap and squeak, and also make which sound that most people link to a quite different animal?

Purring joins a wide vocal range: zoo keepers also report whimpers, shrieks, growls, howls and chatters from these talkative foxes.

Fennec foxes are highly social at home, but how do they set out to hunt?

On their own is the rule: a fennec stalks, springs and pounces by itself, then digs out whatever its ears have picked up under the sand.

Which habit with leftover prey leads fennec foxes to remember particular spots from season to season?

Burying it for later is the habit: fennecs cache meals they cannot finish, and they recall where those stores lie from one season to the next.

Which organs of the fennec fox are specially adapted to hold on to water when the desert offers almost none?

Kidneys do the saving: the fennec's are large and dense, and they hold water back for times of scarcity.

Which fruit turned up alongside more than 400 insects in a study of wild fennec fox droppings?

Dates from the date palm were in the mix when researchers sifted 114 droppings, along with the remains of birds, mammals and reptiles.

Fennec foxes can kill prey larger than themselves, including which animals when fully grown?

Rabbits are the documented case, a striking catch for a hunter that weighs only two to three pounds itself.

The word fennec comes from fanak, a word in which language?

Arabic gave English the name in the late 1700s, and fanak is thought to be linked to a matching Persian word.

Although no one has an exact count of wild fennec foxes, where do they sit on the IUCN Red List?

Least Concern is the listing, judged from how often the foxes are sighted across their range, which shows no sign of a slide toward extinction.

Fennekin, a starter Pokémon in X and Y whose design is based on the fennec fox, is which type?

Fire is the type Fennekin shares with its evolved forms Braixen and Delphox, and it is said to snack on twigs for energy.

Which web browser's first Android version was developed under the codename Fennec?

Firefox picked the codename because its mobile browser was a small version of the desktop one, just as the fennec is a small fox.

Verses about a pet 'long-eared fox' suggest fennec foxes were kept as exotic pets in which ancient empire?

The Roman Empire is the likely setting: the poet Martial's Epigrams call the long-eared fox a popular pet, though foxes of any kind are scarce in Roman art.

The tip of a fennec fox's bushy tail is which color?

Black marks the tail tip, nose and whiskers, standing out against a coat that runs from reddish cream to almost white.

First described in 1780 and renamed several times since, the fennec fox now carries which scientific name?

Vulpes zerda puts the fennec in the genus of the true foxes, after a string of earlier labels that included Fennecus arabicus and Megalotis cerda.

Which big-eared fox has been called a North American counterpart of the fennec fox?

Kit fox and fennec are both counted among the eight desert foxes, a set that also includes the corsac, pale, Tibetan and Cape foxes.

DNA evidence points to which fox, a fellow desert specialist, as the fennec fox's closest living relative?

Blanford's fox is the nearest kin by DNA, and both sit in the same genus as the red fox despite the fennec's distinct looks and behavior.

Nomads say the fennec fox turns so sharply that even which swift desert hounds can hardly ever catch it?

Salukis are the nomads' hunting hounds, yet the fennec is reported to be fast and to change direction so well that it nearly always escapes.

Trade in fennec foxes is regulated under Appendix II of which international wildlife treaty?

CITES lists the fennec in Appendix II, and the fox is also protected by national law in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt.

In which Netflix anime about a death-metal-singing red panda is office worker Fenneko a fennec fox?

Aggretsuko makes Fenneko the closest office friend of Retsuko, the red panda who vents her job frustrations at a karaoke bar.

Fennec foxes defend a home range around each family; how do they mark its borders?

Urine and dung do the signposting, and dominant males leave more scent at the marking sites than other members of the group.

Fennec Shand, an assassin whose look was inspired by the fennec fox, was introduced in which Star Wars series?

The Mandalorian introduced her in its fifth chapter, and actor Ming-Na Wen said the name suggested a character who is tricky, stealthy and built to survive.

Fennec foxes have a slow reproductive rate; how often does a female usually give birth?

Once a year is the norm, and litters are small: usually two to five pups, born in spring after about 50 days of pregnancy.

Besides its famous hearing, which other highly developed sense does the fennec fox rely on most?

Smell and hearing are the fennec's two main ways of reading the world; its ears can pick out prey moving beneath many centimeters of sand.

In North Africa, wild fennec foxes are commonly trapped for exhibition or for sale to which buyers?

Tourists are the usual buyers, and zoos name this trapping, along with hunting by local people, as the main human pressure on the fox.