What Do Foxes Eat? Diet of Red, Arctic and Other Foxes

What do red foxes eat?

The red fox, the most common and widespread fox, is a true opportunist. More than 300 animal species have been recorded in its diet, but a few staples matter most:

• Small rodents: field voles, mice and other rodents are the main prey across most of the range.
• Rabbits and hares: where rabbits are common, as in much of Britain and Spain, they can be the single biggest item.
• Birds and eggs: ground-nesting birds, gamebirds and their eggs, and occasionally poultry.
• Invertebrates: beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, caterpillars and, in damp grassland, large numbers of earthworms.
• Fruit: blackberries, cherries, apples, plums, grapes and other fruit, especially in late summer and autumn.
• Carrion: dead animals found along roads or left by larger predators.

An adult red fox needs roughly 0.5–1 kg (1–2 lb) of food a day. It usually targets prey weighing less than about 3.5 kg (8 lb), although it will scavenge larger carcasses.

How do foxes catch their food?

Foxes rely heavily on their hearing. A hunting fox walks slowly with its ears forward, stops, and listens for the squeak or rustle of a vole under grass or snow. It then leaps high in an arc and lands front feet first, pinning the prey to the ground. This “mousing pounce” works even through a layer of snow, which is why foxes can keep catching rodents all winter.

Foxes also dig small animals out of burrows, snap up insects, and pick fruit from low branches or the ground. On mild, damp nights red foxes walk across lawns and pastures picking up earthworms that have come to the surface, gently pulling each one out so it does not break. Most hunting happens at dusk, at night and at dawn, which places foxes among the best-known nocturnal animals.

How a fox’s diet changes through the year

A fox’s menu shifts with the seasons:

• Winter: rodents caught under snow, rabbits, carrion and food stored earlier in caches. Food is hardest to find now.
• Spring: the breeding season. Parents carry rodents, rabbits and young birds back to the den for the cubs.
• Summer: insects such as beetles and crickets become important, and cubs learn to hunt them first.
• Autumn: fruit and berries ripen. In some areas fruit makes up most, or nearly all, of the diet for a few weeks.

Why do foxes bury food?

Foxes are scatter-hoarders. When they catch more than they can eat, they dig a shallow hole with their front feet, drop in the food, and push soil, leaves or snow back over it with their nose. Each cache usually holds a single item, and a fox spreads many caches across its territory. They find them again using memory and smell, and they often mark empty caches with urine so they do not waste time digging there twice.

What do Arctic, fennec and other foxes eat?

All foxes are flexible feeders, but each species leans toward the food its habitat provides:

The Arctic fox depends on lemmings, and a family can eat dozens a day when lemmings are plentiful. It also follows polar bears to scavenge their kills and stores bird eggs for the lean months. The fennec fox, the smallest fox, gets most of the water it needs from its food and can go for long periods without drinking. The bat-eared fox is unusual among the dog family: insects, especially harvester termites, make up most of its diet. The Tibetan fox sometimes shadows brown bears digging for pikas and catches the pikas that escape.

What do urban foxes eat?

Foxes living in towns still hunt rats, mice, pigeons and insects, and they eat earthworms on lawns and fruit in gardens. Studies comparing city and country foxes show that scavenged human food, from trash cans to spilled birdseed, makes up a much bigger share of the diet in towns. This extra food is one reason urban foxes can live in smaller territories than their rural relatives. For more on where foxes set up home, see where do foxes live?

Do foxes eat cats and chickens?

Foxes eat chickens and other poultry when they can reach them. Their tendency to kill several birds in a henhouse, known as surplus killing, comes from a hunting instinct that is useful in the wild: a fox normally kills extra prey when it is easy to catch and buries it for later. In a closed run, the panicking birds keep triggering that instinct.

Cats are a different story. Adult cats usually stand their ground and are rarely attacked, and foxes and cats are often seen sharing the same garden peacefully. Reported cases of foxes killing cats are uncommon and mostly involve kittens. Small pets kept in open runs, such as rabbits and guinea pigs, are more at risk.