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Sleep, sex and a foxy urban life
By Flora Stubbs, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 27.01.05The secret life of London's 10,000 urban foxes is revealed today. They spend most of their time napping, have a variety of sexual partners and a wholesome diet, new research shows.
Professor Stephen Harris, who led the research team, said sightings are increasing because the foxes are getting tamer. "They are incredibly adaptable. Foxes live in deserts and the Arctic. Cities are just another environment." The study found a typical urban fox travels six to nine kilometres a day and has a territory of about three quarters of a kilometre.
They live in family groups of one breeding pair and the strongest cub from the previous year, making a den under sheds or compost heaps, or in old badger holes. Active for only eight hours a day, they breed in January and February, the males leaving their territory to mate with other females. They rarely live beyond three years and eat birds, mice, beetles, worms, windfall fruit and roadkill, hardly ever foraging in bins. Trevor Williams, of the Fox Project rescue centre in Tunbridge Wells, said: "When people ask what they should be feeding urban foxes, we say, 'Preferably nothing'."
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