Green Group discussion

Foxes - rural or urban, red or grey or local variant.
Bring them here!

I found a post on Phys.org which tells us about a research paper on urban foxes. Scientists compared the skulls of urban to rural foxes. They found skulls becoming smaller but snout shape changing, indicating that survival requirements differed.

Now, look at the photo. That fox has a huge amount of white on it. I've never seen such a white-marked red fox. This is not good for a fox that needs to hunt in stealth mode at night. Any fox with all that white has to be foraging out of bins.

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-city-fo...

Reminds me that when Native Americans wanted to raid other tribes, they chose to ride horses with no white on them so they wouldn't show up in the dark.

https://gizmodo.com/did-humans-domest...

"In the last decade, archaeologists have discovered evidence that foxes may have been kept as pets thousands of years ago—or, at the very least, tolerated to hang around human settlements."

Burials with a person, a diet of grain, and a healed broken limb are among the findings from various sites.

I personally have seen two foxes being walked on leads along the roadside.

Foxes Unearthed: A Story of Love and Loathing in Modern Britain

YA fiction.

The Running Foxes


The Fox Cub Bold


Fox's Feud


Run To Earth

Another one!

Freddie the Ballynahinch Fox

Light crime story about Virginia foxhunting. They have both red and grey foxes, and the fox is allowed to run to ground and escape.

Crazy Like a Fox

https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/1...

"unless something is done before then, the 7,000 incoming Google staffers will be sharing the HQ's killer app – a rooftop garden stretching the seventh to eleventh floors and the length of the building – with members of London's rampant Vulpes vulpes population.

This week the London Centric newsletter received a tip, saying: "The contractors managing the final fit out of the new Google building in King's Cross are having to deal with a 'skulk' of foxes (apparently that is the collective noun). I'm told the foxes colonized the building in the early stages when it was still quite accessible and are now living on the top floor which is like a small park.""

I wonder if they are limited to inside the building space or if they can get outside of the building.

Happiness - by Aminatta Forna - I really liked this novel about a conservation researcher studying foxes in London. It’s very well done. They are quite clever about hiding, and getting in and out of buildings. We have long had an elusive red fox in my suburban neighborhood. I heard her, but didn’t actually get to see her until last summer.

Coincidentally I started a science book today which so far has a lot about foxes (including efforts to breed tame foxes, and genetic manipulation). Life Changing: How Humans are Shaping the Course of Evolution by Helen Pilcher

Thanks, NancyJ, that looks like an interesting pair of books. I've previously read how it only took a few generations to create foxes that were either tamer or more savage than normal. Presumably this is how wolves became dogs.

Arctic foxes are a strong feature in the SF trilogy about a future, flooded and frozen Ireland in the changed North Atlantic. Mainly seen in the second book of the Iceapelago series.

Iceapelago 2091 by Peter Brennan

When a fox says ‘help’ in London, there’s often an ambulance on its way

There are estimated to be 15,000 foxes in London. The project covers a swath of south London and its leafy suburbs while other organizations not devoted solely to foxes handle other parts of the city.

https://apnews.com/article/fox-projec...