A red fox stands still in deep snow, head cocked, listening. Then it springs high into the air and dives nose-first, vanishing up to its tail. This Discovery clip from the series North America captures "mousing", the hunting leap that lets foxes catch rodents they cannot see.
How a red fox hunts under snow
In winter, voles and mice live in tunnels beneath the snowpack, out of sight. The fox finds them by ear. Red foxes have acute hearing: they can pick out a mouse squeaking about 100 metres away and locate sounds to within roughly one degree in the 700–3,000 Hz range.
Once it has a fix, the fox crouches, gathers itself and launches. It sails high above the target, steering in mid-air with its tail, and lands on target up to about five metres away.
Do foxes aim with the Earth's magnetic field?
In 2011, a team led by Jaroslav Červený published a striking study in the journal Biology Letters. Over two years, 23 wildlife biologists and experienced hunters in the Czech Republic recorded almost 600 mousing jumps by 84 foxes.
The results were lopsided. Foxes preferred to jump towards the north-east, about 20 degrees off magnetic north. Those north-easterly pounces succeeded 73 percent of the time, and jumps in the opposite direction 60 percent. In all other directions, the success rate fell to 18 percent.
The researchers proposed that foxes use the magnetic field as a kind of rangefinder. In the Northern Hemisphere the field tilts down at 60–70 degrees. If a fox listens and creeps forward until the sound of its prey reaches it at that same angle, it is always a fixed distance away — the right length for a jump. It remains a hypothesis, but it would explain why foxes hunting in long grass or snow so often line up the same way before they leap.
Red fox facts
- Range: the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is the most widely distributed wild carnivore on Earth, found on every continent except South America and Antarctica, across a range of nearly 70 million square kilometres.
- Size: it is the largest of the true foxes, typically 35–50 cm at the shoulder and weighing 2.2–14 kg; vixens are 15–20 percent lighter than males.
- Winter coat: northern foxes grow long, dense, silky fur, while the head and lower legs stay short-haired and act as "thermal windows" for controlling heat loss.
- Diet: mostly small rodents, but also rabbits, birds, insects and plenty of fruit; a fox needs about 500 grams of food a day.
- Timing: foxes hunt most actively in the early morning and late evening, the best times to watch for a pounce.
Explore more: a wolverine digging in a different context; winter animal portraits at a slower pace.
Related reading
- A Roadside Fox Found Alive: What the Original Rescue Account Establishes
- Eleven Fox Photographs: Fur, Snow and Small Changes of Pose
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