“A fox uses its bushy tail for balance and warmth.”
Red foxes occupy an unusually broad range, from northern forests and farmland to city edges across Europe, Asia, and North America. They hunt rodents with a high pounce, cache surplus food, and raise pups in sheltered dens.
By An Nguyen · Published · Updated
Measured against the 178 species profiled on this site. Each figure is converted to one unit system from the published range on the page, so the ranks are computed, not quoted.
| Measure | This species | Rank here | Exceeds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Body mass | 10.9 kg | #97 of 178#72 of 91 Mammalia | 46% |
| Body length | 88.9 cm | #107 of 178#67 of 91 Mammalia | 40% |
| Top speed | 48.3 km/h | #39 of 77#25 of 47 Mammalia | 46% |
| Lifespan in the wild | 6 yr | #150 of 171#84 of 86 Mammalia | 10% |
Closest in body mass
Ranks use the upper end of each published adult range, so they compare typical large adults rather than records, and metrics with no published number are left out rather than estimated. The full table is downloadable from the species dataset, and any two species can be put side by side in the comparison tool.
Browse photographs of red fox across habitat, behavior, anatomy, and life stages.
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Core article
A closer look at habitat, diet, behavior, reproduction, and conservation.
The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is the most widely distributed wild carnivore on Earth, at home slinking through forest, trotting across savanna, and increasingly threading the alleys of cities. A member of the dog family Canidae, it thrives where bigger, pack-hunting canids can't — not by strength but by sharp senses, a flexible diet, and an almost limitless tolerance for different surroundings.
Red foxes vary a lot in size, roughly 18 to 35 inches in body with a shoulder height of 14 to 20 inches and 6 to 24 pounds. The coat is usually russet-red, though natural black (melanistic) and silver forms occur. The bushy tail — nearly a third of the animal's length — is a Swiss-army organ: a counterbalance for the sharp turns of a 30 mph chase, a wrap-around blanket in winter, and a signal flag to other foxes. But the fox's defining tool is its hearing. The large, upright ears rotate independently and are tuned to low-frequency rustling, letting a fox pinpoint a rodent tunnelling under snow or soil — then pounce with the vertical, nose-first "mousing leap." Genetically it is a "true fox" of the genus Vulpes, a lineage built for solitary stalking rather than the cooperative takedowns of wolves.
The red fox ranges across North America, Europe, Asia, and the northern edge of Africa, and was introduced to Australia, where it has become a devastating invasive predator. Its habitat tolerance is enormous: temperate forest, grassland, arid savanna, and Arctic tundra all suit it, because it needs only prey and some cover for a den. In recent decades it has moved into towns and suburbs with striking success, denning in culverts and living off human food — one of the most thoroughly urbanized wild carnivores.
Though classed as a carnivore, the red fox is really an opportunistic omnivore. The core diet is small mammals — mice, voles, rabbits, and hares — but it shifts readily with the season to ground-nesting birds, beetles and earthworms, and a good deal of fruit and berries. Its hunting signature is the mousing leap: locating hidden prey by ear, it launches into a steep arc and drops nose-first to pin the animal with its forepaws. When food is plentiful, a fox caches the surplus in shallow pits and marks each with urine, relying on a sharp spatial memory to recover it later.
Unlike their pack-living wolf relatives, red foxes hunt alone — yet their breeding lives are surprisingly intricate. They usually form monogamous pairs, occasionally one male with several females where food is rich. Communication runs through a wide vocabulary of barks, whines, and a chilling breeding-season scream, backed by pungent scent from anal sacs and a tail-base "violet gland" used to mark territory. Sometimes a subordinate female — often a daughter from the previous year — stays on as a "helper," provisioning and guarding the current litter, a form of alloparental care.
Breeding is seasonal. After about 52 days' gestation the vixen retreats to an underground den — often an enlarged badger or marmot burrow — and bears a litter of 4 to 6 kits, born blind, deaf, and helpless. While she nurses, the dog fox hunts and brings food. By a month old the kits emerge to play-fight, honing the reflexes and hierarchy that the mousing leap and adult life demand, and they wean at 8 to 10 weeks before joining foraging trips. Young foxes disperse by autumn, sometimes far, to claim their own ground. Captive foxes may reach 14 years, but predation, disease, and cars hold the wild lifespan to just 3 to 6.
Globally the red fox is Least Concern with a stable trend — its adaptability makes it highly resilient. It still faces predation from wolves, coyotes, and golden eagles, and historically the heaviest pressure came from people, through the fur trade and culling where foxes are seen as pests or as rabies and mange vectors. While the species as a whole is secure, isolated subspecies such as the Sierra Nevada red fox are critically endangered through habitat fragmentation and genetic isolation.
A fox uses its bushy tail for balance and warmth.
Foxes can hear rodents moving underground.
Red foxes have a wide range of coat colors, including black and silver.
Fox kits play-fight to practice hunting skills.
A group of foxes is sometimes called a skulk or leash.
Foxes store extra food by burying it to eat later.
Select a question to reveal the answer.
Red foxes live in forests, grasslands, farms, deserts, and even city parks across Europe, Asia, North America, and parts of Africa.
Foxes eat mice, voles, rabbits, birds, insects, fruit, and other food they can catch or find.
Foxes are most active at night and at dawn or dusk, though they may come out in daylight too.
Foxes are much smaller, usually hunt alone, and eat smaller prey. Wolves live in packs and hunt large animals.
Red foxes are listed as Least Concern and remain common in many regions, though local populations can still face threats.
The fennec fox has the largest ears relative to its body of any fox—up to about 6 inches (15 cm) long on an animal that usually weighs under 3.5 pounds. Those oversized ears shed heat in its North African desert home and help it hear insects and small prey moving under the sand. The red fox on this page also has large, mobile ears tuned to low-frequency rustling, but nowhere near the fennec's proportions.
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