50 Fun Facts About Fox

What is a female fox called?

Males are dogs, tods or reynards; the young are cubs, pups or kits.

Which of these is a real collective noun for a group of foxes?

'Leash' and 'earth' are also used; foxes are actually mostly solitary hunters.

On which continent do foxes NOT live?

Australia only has foxes because red foxes were introduced there; they now number in the millions.

Which fox is the most common and widespread species?

It has about 47 recognised subspecies and is the most widely distributed member of the whole order Carnivora.

How many species belong to the 'true fox' genus Vulpes?

Gray foxes, bat-eared foxes and South American 'foxes' sit in other genera.

What is the fox's bushy tail traditionally called?

The word 'fox' itself comes from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'thick-haired, tail'.

Unlike most members of the dog family, foxes have claws that are what?

It is one of several cat-like traits; gray foxes use hooked claws to climb trees.

How long is a vixen's pregnancy?

Litter sizes vary widely; the Arctic fox can have up to eleven kits, and in good lemming years even more.

Which is the smallest of all canid species?

Its huge ears shed heat and pick up prey moving underground; it can live 14 years in captivity.

The big-eared desert fox of the Sahara is the national animal of which country?

The country's football team is nicknamed Les Fennecs.

What colour does the Arctic fox's 'white morph' coat turn in summer?

About 90 percent of the global population is the white morph; the winter coat is twice the length of the summer one.

How many pups can an Arctic fox litter, the largest in the order Carnivora, reach?

Numbers track the lemming boom-and-bust cycle; in lean years the foxes may not breed at all.

Arctic foxes can hear which animal burrowing under 4-5 inches of snow?

They can also smell frozen lemmings deep under snow and detect a seal lair beneath it.

Where is the Arctic fox's rare 'blue morph' most common?

There it makes up 65-70 percent of foxes, against under 10 percent worldwide.

Which North American fox can climb straight up branchless tree trunks?

Its strong hooked claws let it escape coyotes and dogs; its genus is the most ancient living canid line.

The bat-eared fox of Africa has a diet unique among canids. What does it mainly eat?

Harvester termites make up most of it and even supply its water; it never drinks from open water.

Which fox is the smallest of the four Vulpes species in North America?

The endangered San Joaquin kit fox has adapted to urban life in California's Central Valley.

The swift fox was wiped out in which country by 1938 before being reintroduced from 1983?

Small populations are now established in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The Fuegian dog, an extinct domesticated animal of Tierra del Fuego, was bred from which fox?

The Selk'nam people domesticated the South American culpeo; the breed died out around 1900.

A red fox hunting mice under snow appears to align its leap with what?

It pinpoints prey by sound, then sails high in the air, steering with its tail.

How many distinct sounds have researchers identified in adult red foxes?

Kits add eight of their own; the calls span five octaves and blend into one another.

The red fox's tail gland is said to smell of which flower?

The oval 'supracaudal' gland sits under a black spot at the base of the tail.

Because of the damage introduced red foxes do in Australia, the animal appears on which notorious list?

A 2012 estimate put more than 7.2 million red foxes across the mainland, preying on native marsupials.

Roughly how many red foxes did 2012 estimates count in Australia?

Their range covers most of the continental mainland.

How many different urination postures do red foxes use to place scent marks precisely?

Scent marking is how foxes advertise territory; they can also locate a sound to within one degree.

Which is the only fox species native to Western Europe?

The Arctic fox reaches northern Scandinavia and the corsac European Russia, but neither is Western European.

Dmitry Belyayev's famous fox-domestication experiment, begun in 1959, took place in which Russian city?

By the tenth generation tame silver foxes had floppy ears and piebald coats, traits seen in dogs.

In Belyayev's experiment, which dog-like trait first appeared in a tame fox cub in the tenth generation?

Piebald patches and a white star on the forehead showed up in the same generation.

In Japanese folklore, kitsune are messengers of which Shinto deity?

Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto is full of fox statues, and kitsune udon is named for the fried tofu the foxes supposedly love.

According to Japanese folktales, a kitsune grows an extra tail after living how long?

Nine tails marks the oldest and most powerful; the idea was borrowed from Chinese classics.

A sunshower, rain while the sun shines, is called what in Japanese folklore?

Kitsune are also famous for impersonating beautiful women and giving themselves away by their tails.

Thanks to the medieval tales of a trickster fox, 'renard' replaced which older French word for fox?

Reynard's arch-enemy is his uncle Isengrim the wolf; the stories were adapted by Caxton and Goethe.

Disney's 1973 Robin Hood, whose hero is a fox, grew out of Walt Disney's interest in which medieval trickster tale?

Ken Anderson pitched Robin Hood as a slick fox in 1968; Prince John became a scrawny maneless lion.

Which actor voiced the fox Robin Hood in Disney's 1973 film?

Harris was Little John, Ustinov Prince John and Miller the rooster narrator Alan-a-Dale.

In Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox, the three farmers are Boggis, Bunce and who?

They manage only to shoot off Mr Fox's tail; the 2009 stop-motion film has George Clooney as Mr Fox.

Who directed the 2009 stop-motion film of Fantastic Mr Fox?

Meryl Streep voiced Mrs Fox and Bill Murray the Badger.

In Disney's The Fox and the Hound (1981), what is the young fox's name?

Copper is the hound; Mickey Rooney and Kurt Russell voiced the adult pair.

At its release, The Fox and the Hound was the most expensive animated film ever made. What did it cost?

The novel it is based on was written by Daniel P. Mannix in 1967.

Oscar Wilde described fox hunting as 'the unspeakable in full pursuit of the' what?

The line is from A Woman of No Importance (1893).

Which act of Parliament banned chasing foxes with hounds in England and Wales?

Scotland had banned it in 2002; Tony Blair later called the Act one of the measures he most regretted.

The earliest known attempt to hunt a fox with hounds took place in 1534 in which English county?

Farmers were after pest control; the oldest formal hunt is probably the Bilsdale in Yorkshire.

The traditional red hunting coats are misleadingly called what?

Theories range from a weathered scarlet shade to the name of a tailor.

The Fox television network launched in 1986 with which late-night host?

The Late Show never caught The Tonight Show; prime time began in April 1987 with Married... with Children.

The Simpsons began on Fox as a series of shorts on which programme?

It became a series in 1989 and is now the longest-running American sitcom.

'Firefox' is actually a common name for which animal, not a fox at all?

The browser was first called Phoenix, then Firebird, before settling on Firefox in February 2004.

The web browser Firefox was created in 2002 under which codename?

A trademark claim forced the change to Firebird, which annoyed a database project, so it became Firefox.

What is the typical lifespan of a fox in the wild?

Individuals can live up to ten years, and unlike many canids foxes usually live in small family groups rather than packs.

Which non-native predator cut the California island fox population by as much as 95% after 1993?

A canine distemper outbreak in 1999-2000 made things worse, and conservationists had to breed healthy pairs in captivity to rebuild the population.

Darwin's fox survives on the Chilean mainland only in which national park and its surrounding rainforest?

Its other stronghold is Chiloé Island; the IUCN downgraded it from critically endangered to endangered in 2016 after finding a wider range.

Roughly how long are the mystacial whiskers on a fox's muzzle?

Fox whiskers are black, and there are shorter carpal whiskers on the forelimbs, around 40 mm long, that point down and back.