Red fox
As a red fox you would hear a vole rustling under the snow, leap high into the air and land nose-first on dinner.
Everywhere, and adaptable
The red fox, Vulpes vulpes, has the largest natural range of any wild land carnivore, from the Arctic to North Africa and across Eurasia and North America; people also introduced it to Australia. You would weigh about 5–8 kg, with a bushy tail, or brush, almost half your body length, and could live in forests, meadows, farmland or right in the city – urban foxes have been common in Britain since the mid 20th century and are increasingly seen in Polish cities too.
Your diet is opportunistic: voles and mice above all, plus rabbits, birds, eggs, insects, earthworms, fruit, berries, carrion and household scraps. Foxes often cache surplus food, burying it and returning later.
The mousing jump
Your large ears pick up low-frequency sounds such as rodents moving under grass or snow. You then perform the famous mousing pounce: a high, arcing leap ending with front paws and snout plunging down. A study of foxes in the Czech Republic found that jumps aimed roughly north-east were much more successful, leading to the hypothesis that foxes may use the Earth’s magnetic field to judge distance – an intriguing idea that is not yet proven.
You are mainly active at dusk and night, especially where people are around, and communicate with a range of calls, including the eerie scream heard in winter during the mating season.
Cubs and dangers
Foxes mate in mid-winter. In spring the vixen gives birth to usually four to six cubs in an earth, often an enlarged rabbit or badger burrow, or under a shed in town. Both parents, and sometimes helper females, bring food. By autumn the young disperse. Although foxes can live over ten years in captivity, wild foxes usually survive only a couple of years. Traffic, hunting, mange and, in some regions, wolves, lynx and eagles keep their lives short. Mass oral vaccination has nearly eliminated fox rabies in much of Europe.
