22.11.2020 Animal of the week: Red foxes

Hello everyone,

this week's post is about red foxes.

Diet

Foxes aren't fussy about what they eat. They will eat pretty much anything that they can get; rabbits, rodents, birds, frogs, earthworms, fruit, berries and a lot more. They also enjoy rummaging in food waste looking for scraps.

Habitat and species

Foxes normally live in forests but they are also found in mountains, grasslands and deserts. They live in burrows which they dig themselves. These provide safe places to store food and raise their young. They also are a nice cool place to sleep in. A burrow will have multiple exits in case a predator comes in. The most well known species of fox are the red fox and the artic fox. However there are many more types of fox that most people don't know about.

Offspring

Fox babies are known as pups. After mating, the female will make a nest out of leaves in the burrow. Foxes have litters of between two and seven pups. Looking after the new born pups is an affair that the whole family takes part in. The mother and father take it in turns to look after the pups. Even older siblings help take care of their younger siblings by helping the parents find food.

That's it for this week. We hope you enjoyed learning all about red foxes!

Sources:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/red-fox
https://www.britannica.com/animal/red-fox-mammal

Images:
Red fox, owned by tigerburnie (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Red fox pup ( wild ), owned by Eric Bégin (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

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