Foxes from birth to death

[neil cooney 10,416]

Buy the book running with the fox by McDonald, or purchase a book by Sean Frain......to burn

McDonalds book is very good. Is it that book that states that the average lifespan of the Fox is 18 months? This is what I was always lead to believe.

 

 

To be honest Neil I cant remember its years since I read it. I read somewhere that all the foxes used in McDonalds research were dug by terriermen...........

I think you could be right there as I think he said he was grateful to terriermen for their help.

I have a book here written in the 70s by a Zoologist J.S. Fairley. It's called "An Irish beast book." In it nearly all the foxes and otter he worked on were obtained from hunters and lobster fishermen in the case of the otters. Nearly all specimens were skinned when he got them as there was still a fur trade.

On page 120 he says about foxes,

"for it follows that ,from one whelping season to another, one out of every two die, and three out of every four cubs. One can further deduce that few foxes live longer than four years, for theoretically half the population will consist of individuals of one year older or more , a quarter two years older or more, and so on. Another startling deduction is that, if the population is indeed equally divided into young and old in October, even if all the adults survived the Summer, half of all the cubs must die during it. So over the first six months of life ,there is massive infant mortality, more than half the young dieing by Autumn."

That was in the 70s when lamping and road traffic weren't as serious as today. He was talking about disease and internal parasites which would still be around today.

So how come we've more foxes than ever?