The Secret Life of Foxes | BBC Earth

To find a meal in these conditions requires some specialist skills. Something has caught this fox's attention. Unaware of the danger, a rodent tunnels under the snow. To make a clean kill, the fox's next move must be perfect. But if at first you don't succeed, try and try and try again. Despite his best efforts, luck still plays a part and today just isn't his day. There are easier meals available if you know where to look. Yellowstone's lakes won't melt for at least another month. Right now they're covered by solid layer of ice at least a meter thick. The fish below are prized by fishermen and foxes alike. When it comes to reaching this food source, all of the fox's hunting skills are useless. Only man has the tools for this job. But today even the humans are struggling. However, like foxes the world over, he has the power of cunning and charm. It's not much, but every little helps. There aren't many animals here that will get this close to people. Mother is after eggs, but getting them is not going to be easy. The geese will risk their lives to protect their eggs. If they lose them, they can't produce another clutch this season. She gives the first eggs to her young pups and then heads back for more. Some of the eggs she stashes away. They will be fooled to help her through the coming winter. In just three weeks she will steal over 800 eggs from the geese. But eating a big egg is not easy. If one is wrong, it's a technique the pups haven't quite yet cracked. Mum shows how it's done. Sixty million tons of snow now blanket this herd's territory. Pushing through deep snow is exhausting work and the bison are now slowly starving. Just keeping warm saps huge amounts of energy. Their thick coats can insulate them down to minus 30 Celsius. It's now minus 40. The only thing that will keep them alive is buried beneath a meter of snow. And that's a problem shared with a surprising neighbor. The food the fox seeks is also deep beneath the snow. The survival of both creatures depends on getting through to the ground. For the bison it will be a matter of brute strength. Massive neck muscles enable them to shovel five tons of snow a day. Their lightweight neighbor needs more precision. The bison have reached their goal. A mouthful of withered grass. And where the bison have dug, the fox now spots an opportunity. Every footstep counts, but he mustn't break through. Yet, he listens carefully to pinpoint his target. It's moving. A vole. Small, but a hundred times more nutritious than a mouthful of dried grass. To get through the winter on these prairies, sometimes brain beats brawn. And it's not just that fabulous fur the fox has got. They have incredible senses, particularly their hearing. Despite having these fairly small ears, this fox will be able to detect its prey with pinpoint accuracy, even when it's hidden underneath the snow. In the depths of the Canadian winter, a young arctic fox is searching for food. He's still a hunting novice. It's not easy when you can't see your prey. With his acute senses, he can hear a faint sound under the snow. Lemmings. To catch one, he uses a special pouncing technique known as mousing. He has to judge its exact distance as well as the depth of snow. To help them find the right spot, foxes actually align their pounce to the earth's magnetic field. An extraordinary skill. But mousing isn't always easy, especially for a beginner. I'm Yousef Rafiq and I'm a zoologist and former zookeeper. I've spent years working with animals so I know how tough but also rewarding it can be. But now I want to try some of the more unusual wildlife jobs out there and meet the dedicated people behind them to find out if I have what it takes. Today I'm heading to the Fox Project where they rescue and treat over a thousand red foxes every single year, including up to 300 cubs. So I'm very excited. I'm going to be spending the day with the fox ambulance team and hopefully I get to help out with some of the rescues. Foxes are supremely adaptable mammals that have conquered every continent except for Antarctica. They've also spread into our cities and about 35 percent of red foxes now live in urban areas. But as they learn to survive in our human landscapes, they end up coming face to face with new threats. Hi Stacey. Hello, hi. How are you doing? Nice to meet you. And you, welcome to the Fox Project. Thank you, thank you for having me. Oh wow, hello. So tell me about the Fox Project, what is it you do here? So we rescue injured and orphaned red foxes who have had a range of things go wrong for them basically. So then they come into us to receive some rehabilitation and then go back to where they come from. And why is it that foxes need our help? So the species have actually declined by 50 percent over the last 25 years. They're a species that are so misunderstood. Well I'm very excited to be here today, what are we going to be doing first? So we will be cleaning out the casualties we've got in. So obviously we put them into nice clean shorelines and give them the medications that they're in to receive. Obviously give them a full assessment again just to make sure wounds are healing nicely and everything. And then yeah give them a good breakfast. So we've just prepared breakfast. A lot of people think foxes are meat eaters, are carnivores, but they're actually omnivores. So they eat a broad range of things in the wild, everything from earthworms and berries to small rodents. There you go Ruby, enjoy. But just as the rescue foxes tucked into their delicious breakfast, we got a call that there was a fox in trouble a small drive away. So I headed out with Jodie in her fox ambulance to try to find it. Okay we've just literally just arrived now. So we've got to hurry, we've got to go and see what kind of condition this fox is in and try and catch it. It's not easy to catch foxes. They're very quick, they can run up to 30 miles an hour and fit through really small spaces. So this is going to be a bit of a challenge for Jodie. Let's go. So we've got to be very very quiet and we can't get too close because we don't want to disturb the fox and ruin Jodie's chances of being able to catch it because obviously we don't want to distress it any further than it needs to. But you can see that it's obviously not doing too good because it's just sitting there on the lawn and it's not moving. So a healthy fox wouldn't run away by now. Can you bring the cage please? So if you can pull that out and open it. Thank you. And get ready to close it. Okay. Ready? Yeah. Okay. Hey baby. Successful. We got the fox. We did. Got the fox in the back of the ambulance. I think that's quite a smooth catch wasn't it? Yeah that was a very good catch. Let's get him back to hospital. My heart is still pumping. So we've just got back to the hospital now and we're just going to weigh the fox and then we've got to check its general health and see what kind of treatment it will need. So this is a fully grown fox. This is an adult. Yeah fully grown full adult. So what we tend to do is check their gums. So we go from head to tail. Okay. Just so that we're not passing anything that's down the bottom end to the top end. Okay. So he's probably going to bite this so just be prepared. Yeah that's fine. So he has got some blood on the top of his mouth as well. Got a good bite. Other things we check like how the teeth are the way we tell how old they are as well. Okay. So he's got good white teeth. Yeah they look very clean. So Jodie can get him to stand up just so that we can check he's using all of his legs. So both limbs feel okay. There don't seem to be any swellings. Is there something in particular that foxes often come in with? Mange is the most common. Okay. Leg injuries is probably the next thing we see a lot of. What you can do is pinch their toes and that will give you whether or not they have reflex in the legs. Okay. Has this one got reflex? Not in the left currently. So if we can try and get him to stand up because I just want to feel his hips. Can I take my hand? Under the jaw yeah. Yeah. Ready? So yeah it's definitely on this left side something is going on. Not putting any weight on it. No. So he's got a lot of swelling around his rear end as well. So I'd say he's probably got a pelvic issue. Okay. So there is crunching in there so I'd say he's likely got pelvic fractures so unfortunately that is unlikely to be a good outcome for him. Oh no. So what happens now for this guy? So we will get our vet to assess him and make the final decision and so he will decide yeah if he has a chance if we can do anything but if not he will be humanely euthanized. Okay. So to end his suffering. Shortly after the vet passed us the sad news that the fox's injuries were too severe and he wasn't going to make it. I really felt for Stacey and the team and it must be the hardest part of the job when they put so much effort into rescuing an animal that they clearly really care about. Afterwards Jodie took me to see some healthier fox cubs in a nearby woodland to try and cheer us both up a bit. Oh wow. Very inquisitive aren't they? Yes. And how old are these guys? They're about six months. Are they related or is this just a group you put together? This is a group that was put together when they were fostered from babies. Okay. Although these young foxes are in a group now, foxes are mostly solitary animals so after they're released back into the local area they'll be free to disperse as adults if they choose to. We have to because foxes are so intelligent. Yeah. We have to have a gate system where one is closed and the other is open because they will quickly dive out and they will quickly burrow out. Okay so you'll lose them. Pretty quickly yeah they can run fast, jump high, dig quick. Do you know what I was thinking on the drive up here? I've never actually seen a fox cub in real life let alone been this close to any of them so this is just incredible. These are beautifully healthy. So when you've got a fox in and you've you know you've got it recovered and it's healthy again, why is it that you can't just release it straight from the hospital? Why do you have to have a place like this? When we release them they get released to the same location that they were found because that's already their territory and their known territory. Oh I see. Whereas if we've got cubs we tend to put them into a pen and rotate around different fostering sites so that they get used to the change and adapt to the changing environments. You can take a handful of chicks and hide them, just bury them under the hay or the straw wherever. I tend to stash a few in amongst the biscuits. Do moments like this make the job worthwhile? Yeah definitely, absolutely. I'd come here in my free time and just watch them all day and do it so it's just a bonus that it is my job. Whilst the cubs munched on their treats we were called back to the hospital because a new emergency, a different cub, was about to arrive for assessment. We've got a fox, poor little guy. So you're going for the scruff of the neck? Yeah, so that helps protect my hands and just almost acts like what his mum would do to him. Okay. Lovely, thank you. So he is 3.6 kilos. Is that good? Fairly good for a cub. We would prefer above four really but yeah so it's not kind of surprising he's probably not getting as much food as the others especially if he's got this bad mange. So what actually is mange? Because it looks rather nasty. So mange is caused by the caninid mite. Sarcoptic mange is caused by a mite which burrows into the skin causing intense itching. When the fox scratches infections can then move in so it's important that they're treated as soon as possible. Is it a pretty good prognosis? Yeah if we've got them quick enough so obviously if they're covered head to toe in the cracking in the detritus it is still a good prognosis. We've brought quite a few Owen down the end. He came in absolutely covered head to toe. He's looking so much brighter already but it's something that yeah kind of it's quite heartbreaking because it's something that's so easily treated. So yeah we'll pop him into bed and then give him some good dinner. With his first treatment complete it was time for bed. Next it was time to head back out with Jodie and release a fox that had been successfully rehabilitated. Right so me and Jodie are back in the fox ambulance and we've got Chris in the back because we are off to release him. So he's going to be released at the same site that he was found so we've got a little bit of a drive now and yeah I'm really excited to to actually go and witness my first ever fox release. There he is. Right so time to release little Crisp. Crisp was rescued three weeks ago from the same neighbourhood with a leg wound and he's made a brilliant recovery. So is there any technique to this? Do you literally just open the door? Open and fingers crossed. And release. He will run away. Okay he looks like he wants to get out of there. He's very eager to be free. Back into the wild. And he knows exactly where to go. How does it make you feel to be releasing a fox that you've looked after? It's kind of like a proud mum moment. Yeah. And letting them go off into the world on their own. Back out there into the wilderness to fend for themselves. Yeah it's very rewarding. Yeah. So that's it Crisp has been released back into the wild back in the time here today with the fox project has come to an end but it's just been an absolutely incredible experience and it's been great to follow along the journey of all these foxes especially one like Crisp here where it's been such a positive success story and I just feel incredibly lucky that I've been able to be a part of it today. A few weeks later I got the news I've been hoping for. The cub with mange now called Cuba has made a great recovery and was finally ready to be set free. On his own this young fox wouldn't have made it but thanks to wildlife rescue teams like this one even a little fox in a big city gets a second chance. However at only a few days old they have to leave their playtime plateaus. For the first time they must attempt to climb down these terrifying precipices to find food. It's a daunting prospect certainly not for the faint-hearted. Their mother leads the way. The kids are understandably tempted they must slowly pick their way down the sheer rock faces. Their mother shows them the best route she has done it hundreds of times before but for the kids this is new territory. Gradually they start to get the hang of it but they need to focus as one slip could be their last. Finally they've made it. There's a whole new world at the lower levels with plenty of food and water. Here the parents show off their balancing skills as they all browse together but one kid has been left behind and she's in trouble. A fox and it's spotted the straggler. The young ibex runs as fast as it can back up the cliff but the fox is right on its heels. It'll be hoping for a quick kill. As the kid heads back up the cliff the fox tries to gain the higher ground but the kid has scrambled onto a rock face. It's so steep that only it could possibly stand there without toppling off. Last year something quite incredible happened, a behaviour that I was quite shocked by. This was something that actually kind of threw me quite a bit and it really challenged what I knew and what I thought about urban foxes. I'm Sean McCormack, I'm a conservationist and vet and I run Ealing Wildlife Group and this is our nature reserve here in West London which is an old derelict allotment site that we've turned into a community asset for people and wildlife. I'm fascinated by foxes. I grew up kind of in the suburbs in Ireland and my cousins lived in the countryside and I only saw foxes in the countryside really but in recent decades you know they have moved into towns and cities. We've been looking at a family of foxes for the last three years. Now last year something quite incredible happened in terms of fox behaviour. We had two vixens raising their young together in the same den but in the middle of the summer it kind of took a bit of a dark turn. When we were watching these foxes we realised the two had cubs together because we saw the little babies coming out of the den. We were watching them with trail cameras and coming up here in the evenings to see them. When I came up and saw one cub come out and two cubs come out I thought that's fairly normal but then when we got to five, six, seven, eight, nine cubs in total coming out I was just completely astonished and scratching my head a little bit to be honest. How was there nine cubs? Could a single fox have nine cubs? And then placing a trail camera there and watching the family I realised actually there was two vixens. There was a young one and presumably the daughter of last year having her young with the mum. I can only assume that this was to do with kind of competition for den space but it's something that's not very well documented in foxes so it was really exciting to see here. By and large you know it was all very very happy scenes. We had these nine foxes frolicking and asking mum for food and flattened a whole area of vegetation outside the den and it was really you know happy little family story but unfortunately one day that took a slightly darker turn. I came down to put some tools back and unfortunately found one of the cubs dead at the front of the reserve. I realised the cub had puncture marks in its neck and there was fresh blood there and puncture marks like the animal had been killed by presumably another fox. Kind of got thinking that this must be kind of territoriality or competition. Maybe another male fox came in and killed this cub, maybe a competing female came in and killed one of their cubs but in any case the cub was dead and the biologist in me was very interested in this. The vet in me was quite interested in the anatomy and the forensics of the of the scene but the human in me that you know is putting aside the kind of scientific mind thought oh that's pretty sad you know I've been watching these fox cubs for several weeks at this stage and seeing them thrive and grow so to have at least one killed I was a little bit worried about the other ones. So I thought waste not want not I'm going to actually set up a camera at this fox cub's carcass and see what happens. We know we have red kites in the area, we sometimes have buzzards flying overhead so I thought let's see what comes and makes use of this food resource and I was really really surprised as to what happened next. So we had the usual culprits come along, crows, we had magpies feeding off the carcass. That evening the same evening one of the mother foxes appeared. She gingerly stepped around this little fox cub's carcass and kind of was looking at it from a distance and looking very hesitant about it and just having a look and trying to decipher what exactly had happened in my view. It was quite a sad scene you know to see these two vixens coming in. I'm not sure you know which one was actually the mother of this cub but they'd both raised these cubs together and so quite sad to see them kind of looking at this cub and trying to figure out what happened. None of the cubs came near the carcass as far as we could see but the vixens were coming in and getting gradually closer to the carcass and starting to sniff it on the second day and starting to take tentative little nibbles or bites at it on the third day. That evening on the third day we saw a behaviour that I was quite shocked by. They actually started to eat the carcass. As a vet you know I can tend to compartmentalise or kind of keep the emotional side of things out of the way because you have to make tough decisions and you have to be impartial for your clients and yes you can acknowledge the kind of emotions and sentiment behind our relationships with animals but you have to try and have a bit of self-preservation as well. With this, this was a family that I watched you know growing up and thriving and would normally watch with a biologist's hat on and just be interested in their behaviours but this was something that actually kind of threw me quite a bit and I found it quite sad but I guess the rational brain came in to think why is this happening, how can it be explained, what is the logic, what's the evolutionary advantage here in this mother fox or both mother foxes eating their offspring. This was a really fascinating thing to see because for me I was trying to think why would these foxes do this, are there several reasons behind it and I could think of two really and looking at the research this is supported as well. One would be that this is a valuable nutritional resource you know they're in an urban environment there's lots of foxes, very dense populations, competition for food is really high and sometimes there'll be times of plenty and sometimes food supplies will be in scarce demand so they could have just been utilising this fox cub because it was there, it was a rich food resource and why waste it after putting all of that energy into it. So these vixens realise that there's competing foxes around, one of which may have killed this cub and actually by cleaning the remains and taking them away they may reduce the risk that their other cubs are going to come to harm. It tends to be the rule that they don't do that because there's a high risk of disease transmission particularly when it comes to parasites so certain parasite life cycles rely on a predator eating a prey species and a parasite like a worm or an internal kind of protozoan parasite completing its life cycle by getting the prey to be eaten by the predator. A predator eating a predator can actually have really harmful effects if they load up on that parasite life cycle or that parasite species so generally mammals it's been shown will avoid eating other carnivores. The biggest kind of difference I suppose when you compare them to their countryside cousins is they're living in much denser populations. You can have you know kind of two to ten foxes per square kilometre sometimes in some cities depending on food availability and kind of the richness of the habitat you can have up to 30 individuals per square kilometre so that's a really really high density of foxes and the things that allow them to do that really the prime kind of factor is food availability. We are as humans a wasteful species, we throw out a lot of food, we leave scraps on the street, we leave our bins exposed and foxes have really really cashed in on that. Out of the nine cubs we don't know how many survived and what we do know is that we've had just a single pair here this year and only two cubs so obviously you get some good years where things go alt plan and other years where the foxes struggle to raise so many. Foxes are quite opportunistic omnivores, they will take advantage of new situations and new sources of food which is perhaps why they do so well in urban environments and why we're seeing all these strange and new behaviours compared to their country cousins.