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Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) Behaviour

The fox is a very social animal and is usually territorial. Depending on the size of the territory and food availability anything up to seven adults can form the family group. A strict hierarchy will be present where usually only the dominant animals will breed. The family will usually be made up by the dominant dog fox and dominant vixen and several female helpers from previous litters. A certain amount of cubs born in one year will disperse to find territories and mates of their own. Males tend to disperse further than females.

Foxes are usually active at dusk and dawn, but in quite areas can be just as active during the day as in the night. More daytime activity increases as the mating season approaches. Both the dog fox and the vixen will only have a short amount of time in which they will be able to mate, so the dog fox will mirror the very move of the vixen to ensure he will be there when the time is right. Although foxes mainly live above ground, the vixen in January will usually start preparing an earth in preparation for when she gives birth. The cubs are usually born in March and until they are ten - twelve days old the vixen will rarely leave their side. Not only will the cubs up until this age be unable to regulate their own heat they will also be blind and deaf. Cubs will usually be observed above ground in mid-April. If anything is wrong with one of her cubs the vixen will take it to a far corner of her territory and dump it. This Behaviour ensures the remaining littermates do not become infected with something the cub may be carrying. After about three weeks the vixen will start to lie away from her cubs to wean them off her milk onto solid foods. This food will usually be offered to the cubs through regurgitation for the first week or so. The young are completely independent by seven months and are able to breed when ten months of age. 

Conservation

Since the wide distribution of foxes no conservation measures are needed for the species as a whole. Several organisations exist to look after injured or sick individual foxes. The fox is blamed across the world for taking livestock and this will always bring the fox into conflict with man. Foxes are trapped in high numbers for their fur. They are also killed in enormous numbers during rabies control schemes. However following such control measures foxes usually rapidly recover their numbers and because of this the current approach involves using an oral vaccine. This has proven to have a very high success rate in many European countries.

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