Today I want to write about one of the cutest animals in the world, the Arctic fox.
Here are five interesting facts about them:
- These beautiful little foxes only measure about 68 cm long (not including their tail) and grow about 30 cm tall.
- They are very well equipped for living in freezing conditions. They have long, thick white fur, small, furry ears and fur on the soles of their paws, plus extra blood flow to the paws so that they don’t freeze when walking on snow. This enables them to live in temperatures that go down to -50 degrees Celsius. In the summer months, their thick white coat is replaced by a much shorter coat that is brown on top to help them to camouflage with their surroundings.
- Arctic foxes travel a long way to find food and are clever little hunters. They mostly eat lemmings, but will also eat seal pups, birds, fish and carrion. They also eat berries and seaweed when food is scarce. To stop them from starving when there is no food, they are able to slow their heart rate down to conserve energy.
- At breeding time, females can have up to 25 pups, which is the highest litter size amongst all carnivores, although 5-10 is more usual. They have more pups if there is a lot of food around and bring the pups up in underground dens that can be quite large.
- They live all around the North Pole and can be found all across Eurasia, North America, Greenland, Iceland and other northern islands. They are reasonable common over most of their range, although some people still trap them.
I hope that you found these facts interesting and learned something new.
Are there any other interesting facts that you would like to share about Arctic foxes?