Fox habitat. Description of the fox

Fox: description, structure, characteristics. What does a fox look like?

The fox is a predatory mammal, belongs to the canine family, that is, it is a distant relative of both the wolf and the domestic dog.

The size of the fox depends on its species and varies from 18 cm (the smallest fox has a fennec) to 90 cm. The weight of the fox also changes - from 0.7 to 10 kg. All foxes are distinguished by a special generic feature - an elongated muzzle, an elongated body, but with short limbs.

And every decent fox has a fluffy tail. This most fluffy tail of a fox was not only created by nature for beauty, but also serves practical purposes, it acts as a stabilizer while running, and in winter colds it can additionally warm its mistress. The length of the tail of a fox depends on its species, on average it is 40-60 cm.

The hearing of the fox, as well as the sense of smell, are well developed, it is on them that these animals primarily rely during the hunt. As for vision, it is also well developed, moreover, it is adapted for a nocturnal lifestyle and allows you to see well in the dark. That's just the only drawback of the vision of the fox is the moment that it is not able to recognize colors. The fox has 42 teeth in its mouth, with the exception of the big-eared fox, which has as many as 48 teeth.

The body of the fox is covered with red hair, the density of this hairline depends on the type of fox and its habitat, and may also vary depending on the season. So, for example, in foxes living in harsh northern conditions, on winter time the fur becomes thick and lush, in summer the pomp of the fox fur decreases.

Where does the fox live

Foxes live over a wide geographic range, they can be found in the forests of Europe, Asia, North America, North Africa and even Australia. Foxes also live in our Ukrainian forests. From human eyes, foxes often hide in burrows, which they either dig themselves, or do not disdain to take them from other animals. You can also meet them in caves and even large hollows of trees.

What does a fox eat in nature?

What does the fox eat in his forest? As we wrote above, the fox is a predatory animal and various smaller animals serve as food for it - various rodents (field mice, ground squirrels), hares, birds nesting on the ground. The fox does not disdain carrion, as well as leftovers from other predators (wolves, bears), especially if this happens in winter, when it is more problematic to catch fresh animals.

Foxes living in the steppe regions can also eat various large insects (beetles, termites, locusts), frogs. If there is a river nearby, then the fox will not miss the opportunity to eat fish. IN summer period the fox menu is diversified with different fruits, berries, fruits, since, like bears, foxes are omnivorous animals.

An interesting fact: during the hunt, the fox can reach speeds of up to 50 km per hour.

fox lifestyle

Foxes are usually nocturnal, hiding in their burrows during the day and going out to hunt at night. This is facilitated by the peculiarity of their vision, which allows them to see perfectly at night.

Foxes live, as a rule, singly, sometimes two or three, and have their own territory, which they mark with their excrement.

How long does a fox live

Fox's lifespan natural conditions on average, it ranges from 3 to 10 years, although in a zoo a fox can live up to 25 years. This difference is due to the fact that older foxes cannot hunt as successfully in natural conditions.

fox enemies

In nature, the fox does not have so many enemies, some danger may come from the same wolves and bears, but only if the fox inadvertently encroaches on their prey. And so, the most important enemy of the fox (like many other animals) is the most dangerous predator- Human. Many foxes were exterminated by hunters and poachers for their fluffy fur, which later goes to coats.

Why is the fox sly

Why is the fox called cunning? Some believe that such a bad reputation was attached due to the habits of these animals during the hunt. The fact is that the fox always sneaks up to its prey very cunningly, can patiently wait for hours in ambush near the hare hole, and when potential prey appears in sight, it also grabs it very deftly and with lightning speed with its teeth.

In addition, foxes are excellent craftsmen to confuse tracks and evade persecution, abruptly changing the direction of movement, probably thanks to these skills and habits, the epithet “cunning” has been attached to the fox since ancient times.

Types of foxes, photos and names

In nature, there are several main types of foxes, and below we will describe each of them in more detail.

She is a red fox, is the most popular and at the same time the largest representative of the fox family. The weight of an ordinary fox reaches up to 10 kg, the body length with the tail is 150 cm. the end of the tail and the black color of the ears above. The common fox lives throughout Europe, Asia, northern Africa, North America, and Australia.

The American fox lives exclusively on the territory of the American continent in the southwestern states of the United States and in northern Mexico. It is of medium size: its body length is from 37 to 50 cm. The back of this type of fox is painted in yellowish-gray tones. characteristic feature The American fox is the presence of a black tip on the tail.

Also known as the Bukhara, the Balochistan fox is a relatively small representative of its species, its length does not exceed 0.5 meters, and its weight varies from 1.5 to 3 kg. Among other foxes, the Afghan fox stands out for its large ears, which are up to 9 cm high. The coat color of this fox has a rich brownish-gray color. It lives in Afghanistan and neighboring countries. Also found in Egypt, UAE, Turkmenistan.

African fox in his own way appearance very similar to the common fox, the only thing is that it is several times smaller in size. Its total length does not exceed 70-75 cm, and its weight is on average 3.5-3.6 kg. Another difference from the common fox is the presence of longer legs and ears. Lives in many African countries.

She is an Indian fox, usually of medium size, maximum length is 60 cm. The coat of the Bengal fox is short and smooth, has a red-brown or sandy-brown color. It lives in India, in the foothills of the Himalayas, Bangladesh, Nepal.

Steppe fox (korsak)

This fox is also very similar to the common fox, but unlike it, it has an even more pointed muzzle, longer legs and wider ears. But the sizes are smaller, the body length is 0.5-0.6 m, and the weight is 4-6 kg. It has a lighter coat color and a dark or dark brown tail tip. The steppe fox lives in many countries, starting from the southeast of Europe to Asia, including Iran, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Azerbaijan.

This type of fox can boast of wide ears and no less wide paws, which have special pads that protect the fox from hot sand with a thick fur cover. The pale brown color of the sand fox also serves as an excellent camouflage against the background of sand and stones where it lives. The size of this fox is average - the length is 89-90 cm, weight - 3.5-3.6 kg. The sand fox lives in the deserts of North Africa, from Morocco and Egypt to Somalia.

It has a brown or fiery red color on the back, turning into a light gray color on the sides. This fox lives on the territory of the Tibetan plateau, it is also found in India, Nepal and China. Its length is 60-70 cm, weight - up to 5 kg.

fenech

Fenech is notable for the fact that it is the smallest fox in the world, its body length is only 40 cm, and its weight is up to 1.5 kg. Despite the smallest size in the fox kingdom, the fenech also has the largest ears among all foxes, their length reaches up to 15 cm. Fenechs live like sand foxes in the deserts of North Africa, and their paws also have special protective pads that protect their owners from hot on the sand there. I have a red color, the tip of their tail is black.

Despite the name, her ears are not as big as those of the fennec fox, however, the ears of this fox are disproportionately large and reach 13 cm. The big-eared fox has a gray-yellow color with white, yellow or brown spots. A characteristic difference of this species is the presence of as many as 48 teeth (all other foxes have only 42). This fox lives in South and East Africa.

fox breeding

How does the fox reproduce? Like their distant relatives, the wolf, foxes are monogamous animals in which mating season takes place at a certain time of the year. Its time depends on the type of fox, but, as a rule, it lasts from December to March. To create offspring and train them, the male and female foxes temporarily form a full-fledged pair.

Pregnancy of a female fox, depending on its appearance, lasts from 48 to 60 days, after which small foxes are born, in one litter there are from 4 to 16 babies, who, like kittens, are born blind and only later their eyes erupt.

For a month and a half after birth, the babies are on breastfeeding, only after that, when their first teeth begin to erupt, mother fox gradually begins to tame them to meat food, and then to its production. To do this, mother fox teaches them to hunt on different small insects, beetles, frogs. After a few months, the cubs already sharply increase in size, and after a year they leave their parents completely ready for independent life in the forest.

Sexual maturity in foxes occurs in the second year of life.

Fox at home: maintenance and care

If you are looking for extravagances, then instead of the usual ones or a dog, you can get a fox at home, it is only important to remember that keeping these animals has a number of rules:

• The cage for the fox must be spacious so that it can make a den there.
• Also, there must be a drinking bowl in the cage so that the fox does not feel thirsty.
• With a fox, you can and should be trained, so she will not be bored and will be able to quickly become attached to her owners, like a dog, another distant relative.
• However, aggressive play with the fox is not recommended as it may bite.
• In the summer, foxes can emit a very strong and unpleasant smell, simply put, they stink, so they will need to be bathed at least once every two weeks.
• It is very important when keeping a fox at home to have a good veterinarian who will do regular checks on your unusual pet.

How to feed a fox at home

As for nutrition, foxes can be completely fed with dog food, though only the highest grade, chicken meat, beef or fish. In general, they are not very whimsical in nutrition.

• For some peoples in ancient times, it was fox skins that served as money.
• The fact that the fox is a frequent hero of many fairy tales is not news to anyone, but it is interesting that in ancient Mesopotamia it was revered as a sacred animal.
• In medieval Japan, the fox was sometimes considered a real werewolf.
• The hearing of the fox is so strong that it can hear the squeak of a field mouse at a distance of 100 meters.
• Perhaps you are reading this article using the Mozilla Firefox browser, the symbol of which is our today's heroine - the fox.

fox video

And finally, interesting documentary about foxes from the Animal planet channel.

Fox- one of the main characters of old Russian fairy tales, fables, sayings! And it was not in vain that the people assigned her agility and dexterity, cunning and ingenuity. IN last years it has been proven that in its mental activity it is superior to some other animals.

In our country, the fox lives almost everywhere. It does not exist only in the treeless tundra and on the islands of the Polar Basin (there it is replaced by the arctic fox). Depending on the habitat, the body length of this animal ranges from 60 to 90 centimeters, and the length of the tail is always more than half of the body with the head; weight - from four to ten kilograms.
The color of the top of most foxes is bright red with an indistinct cross-shaped pattern on the shoulder blades, the chest and belly are usually white, the back of the ears is black, and the tip of the tail is always white. Foxes living in the northern part of the country are larger and brighter colored. The so-called moths living in Eastern Siberia. In the steppes of the European part, in Kazakhstan and in the deserts Central Asia, foxes are small, dull-colored, and their fur is much coarser.

Among the foxes of the usual color, there are individuals (more often this happens in the northern part of the country), in the color of which the red pigment is replaced to one degree or another by black. Depending on the intensity of the dark color, they are divided into sivodushek, krestovok and black-brown. Such "geeks" have a beautiful valuable fur, but are rare. They should not be confused with the cage-bred black and silver fox (cage foxes are often incorrectly referred to as silver foxes).

Foxes adapt exceptionally well to a wide variety of habitat conditions. They feel equally good in the steppe, and in the mountains, and in the desert. These animals avoid large areas of taiga forests and areas with deep and loose snow.

Few foxes live in flat forest areas, where marshy soils or shallow groundwater make it difficult to build burrows. In such areas, animals settle in river valleys, in places with a relatively well-defined relief and in the vicinity of settlements. In the mountains of the Caucasus, foxes are found at an altitude of almost three thousand meters above sea level, and in Central Asia even up to four or five thousand, that is, up to the belt of eternal snow. In some years, these predators also penetrate the treeless tundra, where they settle in the burrows of arctic foxes, displacing their owners. This happens during the years of mass reproduction of lemmings and voles.

The fox leads a sedentary lifestyle. The area of ​​its habitat, depending on the availability and yield of food, ranges from 10 to 35 square kilometers. But in the years of abundance of mouse-like rodents, the beast can stay on a site of only two to five square kilometers.

Large movements of foxes are caused by a decrease in the availability or lack of food. Foxes are more mobile during the rutting season.

The set of food objects of this predator is wide and varied. However, he extracts certain animals far from being proportional to their occurrence in nature. It has to do with the availability certain types Victims, with their defensive reaction in relation to the predator, as well as the fox's preference for one or another food.

The main food of the fox in all habitats is small mouse-like rodents, especially the less mobile and usually numerous gray voles.

In addition, she catches hares, upland and waterfowl, small passerine chicks, eggs of birds nesting on the ground, frogs, snakes, lizards, fish, mollusks, all kinds of insects, carrion, as well as many plant foods. IN different parts range fox food set is different. In the northern part, in addition to mouse-like rodents, the fox hunts hares and upland birds; in the southern part, many small animals serve as additional food for it. For example, in the steppe regions, the fox destroys many ground squirrels and jerboas, often eats insects, in Transcaucasia and Central Asia, reptiles - lizards and snakes - are a constant and important component of its diet.

The fox has an exceptionally developed ability to replace the lack of basic food in case of crop failure with other, more plentiful and easily accessible food. This explains the large differences in the diet of foxes in different years and seasons. Great individual variability in the diet of foxes is also known: individual animals often specialize in the extraction of some one, sometimes very unusual food. In fishing areas, for example, they adapt to feed on small fish, which are thrown out by fishermen in places where boats moor or nets are cut; predators that live near poultry farms switch to eating poultry and stop getting other food; in muskrat farms, some foxes specialize in hunting muskrats and not only lie in wait for this animal in feeding places, but tear its holes, eat young animals, and often “check” the traps set by hunters.

In Moscow, in the Prioksko-Terrasny Reserve, near a fox hole, more than a dozen cranial parts of the skeleton of domestic cats were found. Apparently, the individual site of this fox included the edge of the forest adjacent to the settlement, where the predator adapted to get and eat its food competitor.

At the beginning of winter in fields and floodplains wide rivers in the early morning, you can sometimes see mouse foxes. Open spaces allow you to observe how the animal moves slowly, often changes direction, stops with its head bowed, and then suddenly jumps high in a jump on a vole and begins to quickly dig up the snow. A bright red beast on white snow on a sunny morning - an unforgettable picture!

While mouseling, the fox catches mole shrews, but eats them extremely rarely because of the specific smell. Once, while trailing a fox on only two or three hectares, I counted five strangled and abandoned shrews. Thanks to excellent hearing (the fox hears the squeak of a mouse at a distance of up to 10 meters), the predator sensitively reacts to the rustle of an animal moving under a layer of snow or in thick grass, grabs and kills it before it has time to realize what kind of prey it is. Thus, populations of insectivores. also experience the pressure of the predatory activity of this beast.

big booty- a hare, a black grouse or a capercaillie - the fox eats partially, the rest hides in reserve. She digs a hole in the ground or in the snow, drags the remains of her prey into it and buries it, using her nose more than her paws.

Often, even with an abundance of food, the fox makes reserves, burying even smaller prey - voles, bird eggs. It hides the loot at different points and does not create concentrated warehouses. This is especially noticeable when she steals clutches of gulls and waterfowl. He buries each egg from the clutch separately, five to ten meters from one another.

The fox finds hidden prey mainly by memory, and not by instinct. This has been established experimentally. Small prey, moved by the researcher a meter or two away from the place where it was buried, the fox did not always find. Usually she dug up the earth exactly in this place where she left the supply.

Rice. 7. Prints of the front (top) and hind paws of the fox

At the end of winter, one can notice the appearance of paired and sometimes group traces of foxes in the lands, which indicates the beginning of the rut. It flows from February to April, depending on the latitude of the area. The female is followed by several males, between which fights sometimes occur, but the female mates with only one of the males. He stays with her for the entire breeding season and takes part in the upbringing of the young.

For a brood, the fox digs a hole or occupies the old dwelling of a badger. After 52-56 days of pregnancy, the female has four or five, sometimes up to ten blind cubs, which begin to see on the 13-15th day. At the age of one and a half months, in sunny daylight hours, the cubs come out of the hole and start games. They are not yet afraid of a person and let him take a few steps. At this time, many of them die from feathered and terrestrial predators, from stray dogs.

IN Western Europe, where the fox for a long time belonged to harmful predators, and therefore the broods of fox cubs were systematically destroyed, female foxes adapted to hide their offspring from humans. In May, when the cubs are only two or three weeks old, the female transfers them from the burrow to cultivated areas of the field, usually in rye, where the brood is difficult to find. This greatly increases the chance of keeping the young.

By autumn, the cubs mature and leave the burrow; the family breaks up, and until the next spring the animals lead a solitary lifestyle. In winter, young foxes are already difficult to distinguish from adults. They become sexually mature at the age of one.

Outside the breeding season, foxes, especially adults, visit burrows very rarely: during severe frosts, in bad weather, or to escape from enemies. They usually spend the day on hay beds, which they arrange most often on some kind of elevation: a snow-covered hillock, a stump, a trunk of a fallen tree, and sometimes even on a haystack.

The fox is very wary of every unfamiliar or new object. At the beginning of winter, when she meets a ski track in the forest, she will never cross it. The predator walks sideways for a long time, periodically runs up to the ski track, as if checking whether it has ended. True, in the middle of winter the ski track no longer bothers the fox, she easily crosses over it, and when the snow is loose, she uses the ski track as a road along which it is easier move.

The fox is able to determine whether a new object, phenomenon, human action is dangerous for her. She can come close to a residential building, as if knowing that the dog is on a chain at that time, or walk close to people engaged in agricultural work. One evening, I was digging a rosehip bush at the edge of the field in order to move it to my house, and by chance, on the edge of the forest, which was fifty meters from me, notice: some kind of movement. It was a fox. She walked slowly along the edge of the forest, sniffing at the burrows of rodents, stopping near stumps, bushes, islets of weeds, and seemed not to pay any attention to me, although, of course, she noticed a long time ago. The fact is that a person wielding a shovel in the field is a familiar and harmless phenomenon for her. In order not to frighten the animal, I continued to pick the ground and carefully from under the brim of my hat watched the hunting search for a quick-witted predator.

Like other members of the canine family, the fox is a digitigrade animal. Her fingers and calcaneal callus are collected quite compactly, because the supporting area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe paw is small. Professor A. N. Formozov calculated that the load on one square centimeter of the supporting surface of the legs in foxes is 40-42.5 grams, which is two and a half times less than that of a wolf.

The prints of rounded elongated four fingers on the footprint are more clearly expressed than the calcaneal callus, the footprint of which is blurry in winter due to the large pubescence of the sole. Like other predators, the footprint of the front paw of the fox is larger than the back,

At first glance, the tracks of a fox can be confused with those of a medium-sized dog. However, upon closer examination, it is easy to notice that the prints of the paws of the predator are more slender, elongated, and the fingers are less gathered into a ball than those of the dog. The claws are also long, thinner and leave sharper prints that are clearly visible on soft ground OR wet snow. A fox track differs from a dog track in the location of individual paw prints when the animal moves at a pace or trot. On shallow snow, you can see that the tracks of the fox are elongated in one line, and the beast puts all four paws, as it were, along a ruler.

Only in the tracks of old large animals is there a slight deviation from a straight line. The dog walks as if swaying.

During the usual course, the fox puts its paws somewhat inward, and by this sign one can distinguish the paw prints of the right and left sides of the body. When moving at a walk or a small trot, her hind legs exactly fall into the prints of her front ones. The step is 20-30 centimeters. When the animal moves to a large lynx, hind legs he puts it behind the front ones, respectively, and their prints are located somewhat ahead of the front ones. And, conversely, if the fox listens or sneaks up on the prey on the go, it goes on very small steps, almost molds a trail to the trail, and the prints of the hind legs are somewhat behind the front ones or overlap them only partially.

When chasing prey or avoiding danger, the fox switches to faster gaits - a gallop or a quarry. This move is a series of jumps, and the prints of the hind pair of paws are always in front of the front ones, and the traces of all four paws form a figure resembling a trapezoid. The faster the move of the beast, the more extended the trapezoid. In addition, on the run, the fox often changes its foot, and therefore the top and base of the trapezoid are turned either to the right or to the left. At a fast gait, individual fox jumps can exceed three meters. The female has smaller footprints than the male, the stride is shorter, and the paw prints are more pointed.

Rice. 8. Fox Footprints:
A). - step, small trot - the animal puts its hind legs exactly in the prints of the front ones; b). large lynx - hind legs leave traces in front of the front ones; c - gallop, quarry - prints of the hind pair of paws are located in front of the front ones.

It has already been said above that the supporting area of ​​​​the fox is small and it is difficult for her to move on loose snow. If it sinks in the snow for more than 15-18 centimeters, the tracks are no longer located on one straight line. The animal leaves a path one and a half wide, and in deep snow two palms, and the drag is connected to the drag, and the left and right pairs of paws form deep furrows. With even deeper snow, the fox can touch its surface with its chest, but it usually avoids places with such deep snow. Sometimes, when moving through deep snow, the fox draws on its surface with its magnificent tail, between the pits from the paws. In some places, wide, but weakly expressed strokes remain.

Usually, during the search move, the fox goes at a light trot, while the chain of tracks or, as they say, hunters, the track is very winding. It often changes direction, approaches all objects protruding above the surface of the snow - mounds, poles, bunches of weeds, haystacks and stacks of straw, and if the latter have snow on one side, the fox will not fail to climb to the top.

On the way of the mouse fox there are traces of her digging. In deep snow, they look like a funnel, at the bottom of which one can sometimes notice (if the fox's throw was successful) droplets of blood and tufts of hair from a caught vole. The predator does not stop mouseling even when deep snow is covered with a thin crust that can barely support its weight. At this time, the fox's digs look like a narrow mortar, into which it sinks almost entirely: only the tail and hind legs are visible on the surface. It remains a mystery how, in such a state of snow, she can catch a vole. It is possible that her digging is associated not only with hunting for rodents, but also with the search for hidden food remains.

With a strong crust, the fox can hunt only near haystacks, stacks of straw, in which voles concentrate for the winter. At this time, the nature of her traces becomes different. She no longer leaves intricate patterns of her traces in open fields, as with a mouse. The search trail is now more straightforward, daily transitions are longer: the predator hunts for large game, upland birds and hares, or searches for carrion.

In the second half of winter, carrion for the fox becomes the main food. At this time, its traces can often be observed in the immediate vicinity of settlements. Hungry animals, looking for carrion or other edible remains, visit garbage heaps, and if there are cattle burial grounds nearby, then traces of one or more foxes can always be found near them. To the corpse of a dead wounded elk or to the insides of this animal, abandoned by hunters, foxes even fill paths.

Often a fox can be seen on the tracks of wolves or lynxes. Out of caution, she does not follow the predator, but follows its trail - "on the heel" in the hope of using the remnants of the food of a stronger fellow. Once I managed to observe how a fox stole a part of a hare carcass that was not eaten by a lynx. At this time, she was, apparently, full, and therefore, having dragged away a fair part of the lynx prey for almost half a kilometer, she buried it in the snow as a reserve.

During the snowless period, the fox naturally leaves fewer traces. At this time, its presence can be seen from the remnants of a meal, heaps of bird feathers, and the bases of large fly and tail feathers are gnawed, which is typical for a fox. The shells at the plundered duck or grouse nest also betray this predator. If the eggs are drunk or eaten by a fox, two holes from her fangs remain on the shells.

There are many urinary spots and excrement on the tracks of the fox. In winter, it is easy to distinguish a male from a female by urinary spots - in this act, foxes behave in the same way as domestic dogs. Fox excrement is a well-formed roller one and a half to two centimeters thick and five to ten centimeters long. Sometimes they consist of two or three parts, interconnected by thin constrictions. Feces are usually dark in color and contain undigested food residues: wool, small rodent bones, bird feathers, chitin, green parts and plant seeds. Sometimes, like that of a wolf, fox feces are white and consist entirely of lime. This means that the beast did not eat anything but bones. Urine and excrement are products of the physiological process that takes place in the body of an animal, and at the same time carry certain information for other individuals of the same species. Leaving heaps of droppings in well-marked places: on a stone, a mound, a stump, a bunch of weeds, near a pole and spraying these objects with urine, the fox marks his individual site, declaring rights to a certain territory.

One of the most obvious signs The habitat of the fox in the area is its burrow. The fox digs holes in places with a well-defined relief and a relatively deep occurrence of groundwater. They are usually simple, shallow, have one exit, and are located somewhere on the slope of a ravine, hill, or river terrace. However, most often the fox settles in the old badger burrows, preferring them to their own. It is easy to distinguish a living burrow from an abandoned one by the crushed dried grassy vegetation near it, the wiping of the entrance, scratches from claws, the absence of cobwebs in the tunnel and, of course, but paw prints at the entrance.

The inhabitant of the hole is betrayed by the situation around it. There are usually no food leftovers near a hole inhabited by a badger; along the paths leading from the hole, the badger arranges latrines, in which a lot of excrement accumulates. A burrow inhabited by a fox usually does not have such latrines, and feces can be scattered in different places. Bones, feathers, and other remains of fox meals are common on the platform near the hole, and sometimes they are in such abundance that the dwelling of a predator can be detected from afar, by the smell of decaying remains.

Once, in the Ural-Emba semi-desert, I counted ground squirrels, catching them with traps. At one of the registration sites, the traps began to disappear, as if someone regularly carried them away in this deserted area. Later, the loss was discovered two kilometers from the temporary camp near a hole with already grown fox cubs. Around the hole I counted the remains of more than forty carcasses of gophers and jerboas, some of which were brought here by the fox along with my traps. By the way, this fox fed the brood in a completely waterless area: both she and the growing young brought the water balance only due to fat and moisture in the tissues of the ground squirrels.

The fox, eating rodents - pests of crops, certainly brings great benefits. agriculture and therefore, outside the hunting season, it is subject to a wave of protection. Particular care should be taken with brood burrows, the ruin of which sharply affects the abundance of the species. The insignificant harm that the fox can cause by eating game animals, she repeatedly atones for the price of her beautiful and warm fur. It is also impossible to discount the fact that the fox is an important object of sport hunting and a tempting trophy for every hunter.

The fox is one of the most beautiful predators. The color of the skin is red, the tail is long and fluffy, the muzzle is long and narrow, and the eyes are smart and cunning. The fox is about the size of a small dog. The color of the red cheat varies from fiery red to gray. In the north, foxes are almost red, in the steppe they are gray-yellow. Silver fox, by the way, is also an ordinary fox with some deviations from normal coloring. The most beautiful is black-brown fur. Therefore, silver fox has long been bred on farms.

The fox lives in Europe, and in Asia, and in America, and in Africa. This animal adapts well to different climatic conditions. Southern foxes are smaller than northern foxes, and besides, northern foxes have thicker and fluffier fur. The fox is an extremely agile and frisky animal. She runs so fast that it is difficult for dogs to catch up with her. In addition, this is a very cunning beast: she can indulge in various tricks, confusing her own tracks or getting her own food.

What does a fox eat. How the fox hunts

The fox is a great hunter. In addition to observation and ingenuity, she has an excellent memory, a good sense of smell and remarkably sharp hearing. The squeak of a vole, for example, a fox hears for 100 m. Being a predator, the fox eats a wide variety of animals. She eats mice, hares, rabbits, amphibians, reptiles with pleasure, digs up earthworms from the ground after rain, catches fish and crayfish in the river. But the red cheat is especially fond of feasting on a bird. Therefore, she often looks into chicken coops. By the way, the proximity of a person does not scare a fox at all, so you can often find a fox hole very close to the village. The fox successfully supplements the meat diet with berries, apples, and vegetables.

Each fox has its own individual feeding area. She jealously guards him from the intrusion of strangers and always knows what is happening near her hole. The fox usually hunts in the evening and at night, although there are exceptions. Some animals prefer to go around hare nesting sites during the day, hunt birds and feed exclusively on large game, neglecting mice or frogs.

Despite the fact that the fox will not miss the opportunity to feast on a gaping hare, catch a black grouse or ruin a bird's nest, in the forest it does much more good than harm. The main food of foxes is voles, mice, ground squirrels and other rodents that are harmful to agriculture. And the growing foxes in in large numbers exterminate may beetles- known pests in forest areas.

Mating season for foxes

The mating season for the fox begins in January - February. At this time, the female rushes to search for males, who declare their readiness to marry with a short, abrupt bark. During the rut, you can see an amazing group: a beautiful female runs ahead, and several males follow her at once. In the end, the patience of males is depleted, it's time to choose which of them is worthy to take a place next to the female. You can watch fierce fights between males, during which the fox patiently waits in the direction of the winner. Only the strongest fox gets the right to mate with a female. At the end of estrus, the foxes scatter to the sides.

fox cubs

Pregnancy in foxes lasts 51 - 52 days. By the end of this period, the paternal instinct wakes up in males. They search for pregnant females and again fight with rival males, now for the right to stay near the female. From now on, the winner takes all the hardships family life: helps to dig a hole, feeds the fox at a time when she still cannot leave newborns, shares with the female the responsibility for raising young foxes. Fox cubs usually appear in late April or early May.

At first they are brown in color and very similar to puppies, but they all have hallmark- white tip of the tail. The younger generation is growing up rapidly, by the 20th day of life they are already beginning to crawl out of the hole and feed on mother's milk, but live food. It is not easy for the father of the family to feed the voracious cubs, so the female also begins to help in the extraction of food. Parents not only bring live mice, birds and small animals into the hole, but also begin to teach the kids the basics of hunting. At first, the cubs prey on May beetles and grasshoppers, but gradually they become accustomed to preying on larger game: voles, lizards, and frogs.

Fox cubs grow rapidly, and already in August it is difficult to distinguish them from a distance from an adult animal. In November, young foxes begin an independent life and disperse in all directions.

Where does the fox live: the habits of the fox. fox holes

Foxes don't always live in burrows. They use these dwellings only when raising offspring, and spend the rest of the time in the open. Foxes have almost no feelings of home. They settle where they like, and even then not for long. The fox willingly digs holes near human dwellings, sometimes foxes wander even into big cities. The fox often does not want to dig a hole on its own and uses other people's dwellings, for example, the fox has great respect for comfortable burrows dug by a badger.

A mature fox acquires burrows not only in order to grow offspring in them or hide from prolonged bad weather. Often burrows serve as a refuge for them in case of danger.

The old fox, as usual, has not one hole where her brood is placed, but several at once, which provide her with a reliable refuge in exceptional cases.

Fox hatching holes are mainly located on the slopes of a ravine, not far from a stream, in a forest thicket, that is, where people usually do not wander. It happens that the fox from year to year returns to the hole dug by her once. Then such "apartments" are constantly expanding, being renovated, acquiring several additional "rooms", which are usually located on 2 - 3 floors. Hunters are well acquainted with such holes and call them "secular".

Usually, a fox hatching hole is equipped with several exits - otnorks, which allow it to leave its shelter unnoticed in case of danger. The main snout, which the fox regularly uses to enter and exit, is noticeable from afar. Usually this is a clean area, sprinkled with sand, which appeared here as a result of many years of cleaning the hole. Here you can often see playing foxes.

The fox's molting period

By the end of winter, the fox coat, previously shiny and fluffy, begins to fade and becomes rough. The fox begins a molting period - hair falls out, and the beast loses its external attractiveness. Molting occurs quite quickly, and by May the foxes acquire a new fur coat - summer. If the fox is sick or thin, the molting period is extended, and then even in June you can see a fox with disheveled winter fur. Summer wool is not valued: it is coarse and rare, since there is practically no undercoat - with the beginning of autumn, the wool begins to thicken. And only with the onset of cold weather fox fur begins to be considered full-fledged.

Fox hunting. How to hunt a fox

For fox hunting to be successful, the hunter must learn about all the habits of this cunning beast. In addition, you need to learn how to unravel the fox trail and distinguish it from the dog. For an experienced tracker, a fox trail can tell a lot: about the age and gender of the past fox, about where the beast was and what he did, whether he was hungry or full. The tracker reads the footprints, as in open book and this can only be learned through continuous practice.

Compassion as a diagnosis.

And tell me, dear ones, what does compassion indicate? Such an event happened. Someone threw newborn kittens under the windows, in the heat, as planned, they did not die and screamed for almost a week ...

Elizaveta Patrikeevna, fox Alice, fox-sister ... As soon as they affectionately call this cunning beast in folk tales. Today in our article there is a fox animal, description, photo and video about this amazing red forest dweller.

Red fox (common fox)

The fox is the main character in many fairy tales, she is always referred to as a cunning thief, with a beautiful “fur coat” and a fluffy tail. Why is a fox called a cunning? Is she really like that, or only in fairy tales?

The red fox belongs to the Canine family. She has pointed ears and an elongated muzzle. And this animal also has unusually beautiful long-haired fur and a long fluffy tail, which serves as a “blanket” for the front paws and nose at a time when the fox is resting.

The size of this animal is average: the length of the body is not more than 90 centimeters, and the tail is from 40 to 60 cm. The animal weighs from 6 to 10 kilograms. The age to which a fox lives under conditions wildlife, is equal to no more than 7 years.

In the red fox, the tip of the tail is colored in White color, and the paws have black blotches.

In nature, an ordinary fox has different colors of wool, but on farms where foxes are bred, there are representatives of platinum color and silver-black. Such rare colors are valued among hunters, so if a fox that escaped from a fur farm gets into the hunter's field of vision, he will not stop until he catches it.

Red fox habitat

This species of fox lives on almost the entire planet, except, perhaps, arctic tundra and islands. The red fox can be found throughout the Eurasian continent, in North America, the northern part of the African continent and even in Australia.

Foxes are excellent swimmers. By the way, they can even dive shallow, hunting for fish.

What does a red fox eat

The fox is a predatory animal, so a variety of small animals can get to it on the "dining table". Basically, these are rodents. Also, foxes eat birds, fish (on spawning rivers), carrion, insects and berries.

The ways of hunting the fox are very interesting, it can adapt to the habits of any animal that it has “looked after” as food. For example, she can push a hedgehog directly into the water so that it turns around, and it can be grabbed by the abdomen, which does not have needles. When there is a hunt for wild geese, then the foxes prefer to act in pairs: one distracts the flock, the other sneaks up at this time and attacks the prey in one jump. And she easily digs out rodents from under the snow, finding a place by sound. Still, it’s not for nothing that foxes are known as cunning animals - what kind of ways they don’t invent to get their own food!

Fox "mouse" - hunts for a mouse under a layer of snow

Hunting takes place around the clock, although the most successful time is twilight.

In general, the fox can be called an omnivore. Its "menu" includes almost 400 species of various animals and dozens of types of plant foods. The scientists concluded that the population of red foxes directly depends on the number of rodents (especially field mice), since mice are the main fox food.

Listen to the voice of the fox

Many people know foxes as thieves of poultry. Very often, the fox sneaks into the place where the chickens sleep and steals them. Although birds are not considered the main food of the red fox, the animal still often eats them. In addition to chickens, the fox loves the meat of capercaillie, geese and other birds.

Foxes living in the deserts have to be content with the meat of reptiles. If there is nearby shallow river with fish, then the fox will certainly come there to feast on, for example, salmon. During the summer months, the animal eats beetles and other insects.

Plant foods are of little interest to foxes, but in the absence of meat food, the fox will be happy with fruits and berries, as well as any greenery.

Reproduction and offspring

The period of birth of puppies (the so-called fox cubs) is mainly considered to be the middle of spring. To breed, foxes dig a deep hole, but sometimes they can take someone else's. Usually one female gives birth to four to six cubs. Pregnancy lasts from 44 to 58 days. After birth, the mother feeds the offspring with milk for about 1.5 months. When the cubs are 2 years old, they are already fully grown adults. The matured cubs of the fox are fed with live prey, the foxes themselves kill the "food".

Foxes are very beautiful animals, which are characterized as extremely cunning creatures. These traits of their character, which are passed down from generation to generation, have allowed animals to survive to our times. If you are really interested in these animals, then we have prepared interesting facts about foxes especially for you.

The most amazing and interesting facts about foxes

Foxes are lonely animals

Foxes belong to the canine family, which means that their relatives are wolves, jackals, and dogs. They are of medium size (slightly smaller than the average size of a domestic dog), and weight ranges from 3 to 6.5 kg. Also, a particularly distinguishing feature of foxes is their fluffy tail.

But unlike their relatives, foxes do not live in packs. When raising her cubs, the fox lives in a small family called "fox liners" in underground burrows. Otherwise, they hunt and sleep alone.

Foxes have a lot in common with cats

Like cats, foxes are most active at night. Thanks to their unique vision, these animals are well oriented in the dark. They even hunt in the same way as cats.

And this is just one of many similarities. Like kuts, foxes have sensitive hairs and spines on their tongues. They also move in a similar way, having an elegant gait. Foxes also have "retractable" claws that help them climb trees and even climb onto rooftops. Some foxes even sleep in trees just like cats do.

The red fox is the most common species

Red foxes can be found in many parts of the world (from the Arctic Circle to North Africa and from Central America to the Asian steppes). At the same time, the natural habitat of these animals is a mixed landscape of bushes and foxes.

Such a wide population of this species of fox is due to their flexible diet.

Foxes use the earth's magnetic field

How guided missiles, foxes use the earth's magnetic field to hunt. Other animals have the same abilities, such as sharks, turtles, some types of birds, but foxes are the only ones so far using their skills in order to catch the victim.

According to New Scientist, the fox can see the Earth's magnetic field as a "ring of shadow" over its eyes, which darkens as the animal heads toward magnetic north. When the shadow and sound of the victim create a line - it's time to pounce on it. Here is the fox in action:

Foxes are good parents

Another interesting fact about foxes is their care for offspring. Foxes breed once a year, but at the same time, from 1 to 11 cubs are born to them (6 on average). Cubs are born blind, their eyes open nine days after birth. During this time they stay with the fox (female) in the hole while the fox (male) brings them food.

Little foxes live with their parents for up to seven months. Females protect their young with amazing fidelity.

Foxes are very playful

Foxes are known to be very friendly and curious. They love to play among themselves as well as with other animals such as cats and dogs. Foxes also love balls, which they often steal from golf courses.

Despite the fact that foxes are wild animals, they have a very good relationship with people. In 2011, researchers discovered a grave that was located in a cemetery in Jordan and dates back over 16,500 years. Archaeologists found in the grave the remains of a man and his pet - a fox. It was 4000 years before the first a famous person and the dog were buried together.

You can purchase a domesticated fox

In the 1960s, the Soviet geneticist Dmitry Belyaev studied foxes and bred over a thousand individuals before achieving the domestication of foxes. Unlike tamed foxes, which have learned to tolerate humans, domesticated foxes are obedient to humans from birth. Today you can buy a pet fox for $9,000 (or so).

Arctic foxes do not freeze even at -70 Celsius

The arctic fox, living in the regions of the Arctic Circle, is able to withstand the cold better than most other animals. They do not freeze even when the temperature drops to -70 degrees Celsius. Their white fur helps them camouflage themselves from predators, but as the seasons change, their "coat" also changes in color (darkens). This allows them to mix with the rocks and mud of the tundra.

A species of fox that can hear insects

The big-eared fox is so called not only because of their 5-inch ears, but also because they use their hearing as the bats to hear insects. When night falls, these foxes come out into the African shroud to start "listening to the victims." Termites make up the bulk of their diet. In addition, big-eared foxes often make their homes in termite mounds.

Foxes can make many sounds

The last and probably the most interesting fact about foxes - their ability to make sounds. These animals can produce about 40 different sounds, but the most striking of them is the cry.