Red Fox
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50 free Red Fox trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The red fox is the wild neighbour almost everyone has met, whether as a flash of rust-coloured fur at the edge of a wood or a bold visitor trotting down a city street at night. It is small, quick and endlessly adaptable, and the more closely scientists watch it, the stranger and cleverer it turns out to be. This quiz collects the best fun facts about red foxes and turns them into questions. Some cover the animal itself: its senses, its hunting tricks, its voice, its family life, its relatives and its rivals. Others follow the fox into the human world, from farms, fur and city gardens to old fables, folk beliefs, picture books and animated films. It is written for wildlife fans, curious kids and their parents, teachers and quiz teams. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so even a wrong guess leaves you with a new fact to pass on.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Red foxes pouncing on mice hidden under deep snow appear to line up their leap using what?
Earth's magnetic field
Earth's magnetic field seems to help the fox judge its jump: it pinpoints the prey by sound, then sails through the air to land on a target up to 5 metres away.
Q 02In Finnish folklore, a fox running through snowy hills conjures which display in the sky?
Northern lights
Northern lights are still called revontulet in Finnish, a word that literally translates as fox-fires.
Q 03The scent gland near the base of a red fox's tail is reported to smell like which flower?
Violets
Violets are the scent reported for this gland, whose position is usually marked by a small black spot in the fur.
Q 04The web browser Firefox, whose logo shows a fox, is actually named after which animal?
Red panda
Red panda is the animal behind the name: firefox is a common name for it, even though the animal drawn in the browser's logo is a stylised fox.
Q 05Which country released red foxes for sport in the 1800s and now counts them a major pest?
Australia
Australia now has millions of red foxes, and their spread has gone hand in hand with the decline of native animals such as bilbies, numbats and quokkas.
Q 06Despite the red fox's henhouse reputation, what can make up its entire diet in autumn?
Fruit
Fruit can be all a red fox eats in autumn in some areas, with cherries, plums, apples and even acorns on the menu.
Q 07Which masked hero of old California, created in 1919, is named after the Spanish for fox?
Zorro
Zorro is simply Spanish for fox, a nickname the townspeople in the stories give the masked rider for his cunning and charm.
Q 08What colour are the eyes of newborn red fox kits, before they change to amber at about a month old?
Blue
Blue is the colour kits are born with, though at first nobody can see it: they arrive blind, and their eyes stay shut for about two weeks.
Q 09Red foxes seem to dislike the taste of which diggers, yet catch them alive for their young?
Moles
Moles are caught alive and handed over to the kits as playthings, even though the adults apparently find them unpleasant to eat.
Q 10Which country's scientists bred foxes so tame that they wag their tails at people?
Russia
Russia is home to the experiment, begun by geneticist Dmitry Belyayev, in which only the foxes that were calmest around humans were allowed to breed.
Q 11Which word for a female fox keeps an old southern English v where the north said f?
Vixen
Vixen survives from a time when southern English speakers said vox for fox, making it one of very few modern words to keep that old v.
Q 12In Aesop's fable, a fox decides that which out-of-reach food was probably sour anyway?
Grapes
Grapes hanging on a vine defeat the fox, and the fable gave English an idiom for scorning something you cannot have.
Q 13Which author wrote Fantastic Mr Fox, in which a fox outwits farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean?
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl published the novel in 1970, and its hero keeps his family fed by tunnelling into the farmers' stores while they wait at his hole.
Q 21The red fox is the largest true fox, but which North African species is the smallest?
Fennec fox
Fennec fox adults weigh only 0.7 to 1.6 kg, while a red fox averages 4.1 to 8.7 kg, several times heavier.
Q 22In Aesop's fable, a fox flatters a crow into cawing so that the bird drops which food?
Cheese
Cheese falls from the crow's beak the moment the bird caws, after the fox wonders aloud whether its voice is as sweet as its looks.
Q 23One of North America's most endangered mammals is a red fox named after which mountain range?
Sierra Nevada
Sierra Nevada red foxes live high in the mountains and are somewhat smaller and lighter than the red foxes of the lowlands.
Q 14Which legendary outlaw did Disney portray as a red fox in a 1973 animated film?
Robin Hood
Robin Hood and Maid Marian are both red foxes in the film, which fills medieval England with talking animals instead of humans.
Q 15The red fox belongs to which animal family, alongside wolves and jackals?
Canidae
Canidae is the dog family, in which foxes stand apart from wolves and jackals by their smaller size, longer and bushier tails and flatter skulls.
Q 16What colour is the tip of a typical red fox's tail, in contrast to its black paws?
White
White tips the tail of a typical red fox, and the tail itself is so long that it reaches the ground when the animal is standing.
Q 17Red foxes are the most important wild carrier in Europe of which deadly viral disease?
Rabies
Rabies has been cut back across rural Europe by oral vaccines hidden in baits, which protect the wild animals that eat them.
Q 18Red foxes set the southern limit of the range of which smaller relative?
Arctic fox
Arctic fox territory ends where the bigger red fox takes over, and on islands where fur companies released both, the red fox invariably displaced its cousin.
Q 19Red foxes, which also have a third eyelid, have pupils of which shape?
Vertical ovals
Vertical ovals are the shape of a red fox's pupils, set in eyes that respond mainly to movement rather than to fine detail.
Q 20In Zootopia, red fox con artist Nick Wilde teams up with a rookie cop of which species?
Rabbit
Rabbit recruit Judy Hopps is hustled by Nick during her shift, before the pair work together to uncover a conspiracy behind the disappearance of predators.
Q 24Which country is home to Ylvis, the comedy duo behind the 2013 viral hit The Fox?
Norway
Norway got the joke first: the brothers made the song as a deliberate anti-hit to promote their television talk show, and it became YouTube's top trending video of 2013.
Q 25Which biblical strongman set Philistine crops alight by tying torches to the tails of 300 foxes?
Samson
Samson tied the foxes together in pairs by their tails, fixed a burning torch to each pair and turned them loose among the standing grain and olive groves.
Q 26Which large bird of prey regularly takes young red foxes and will prey on adults if needed?
Golden eagle
Golden eagle attacks mostly target the young, and red foxes sometimes turn the tables on smaller raptors by stealing kills from buzzards and goshawks.
Q 27Which burrowing mammal may share a den with red foxes, tidying up in return for food scraps?
Badger
Badger and fox may put up with each other because both gain, though the bigger animal has also been known to drive foxes out and destroy their litters.
Q 28Foxes bred only for tameness in a famous experiment grew curly tails and which dog-like trait?
Floppy ears
Floppy ears first appeared in a cub of the tenth generation, even though the breeders had chosen the parents only for how they behaved around people.
Q 29What is the scientific name of the red fox, the largest of the true foxes?
Vulpes vulpes
Vulpes vulpes doubles the Latin word for fox, which also gives English the adjectives vulpine and vulpecular.
Q 30Which old word for a male fox did Disney give the young red fox in The Fox and the Hound?
Tod
Tod is the name a kindly farmer gives the orphaned cub she adopts, and it doubles as a traditional term for a male fox.