Readers’ wildlife photos and videos (adorable Arctic fox cubs)

July 18, 2024 • 8:15 am

After a long break doing field work, Bruce Lyon of UC Santa Cruz, now in Alaska working on birds, sent some photos of bonus mammals: cute Arctic foxed with added VIDEOS. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. His intro:

Since foxes are honorary cats on WEIT, I thought people would enjoy some photos and videos of an arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) family on St Paul Island, Alaska, where I have spent the summer studying birds. There is a fox den in the boulders next to the beach near my lodging and the pair has a whopping nine pups! The other day all nine adorable fuzzballs were playing out in the open on the beach and I was able to watch and photograph their antics. There were lots of playfights, chases and pounces, tossing bits of dried fish into the air, chewing and attacking a piece of driftwood on the beach, and leaping up and pirouetting in the air.

Arctic foxes are native to St Paul Island and virtually all individuals are blue morph rather than white morph foxes. Occasionally, white morph individuals do get here by crossing the winter sea ice. The morphs are apparently produced by a single Mendelian gene (the MC1R gene). However, three of the pups have white feet, so perhaps the coat color is mostly but not entirely determined by the MC1R gene.

JAC: Here’s the location of St. Paul Island in the Priblofs (from Wikipedia):

A video best shows how adorable these fuzzballs are. Seven of the nine pups are in view:

Another video—the pups having fun with their driftwood toy:

One last video—a sibling’s tail makes for a great toy:

The fox playground. The pup on the right is in pounce mode and pounced on its sib just after I took the photograph:

A pup inspects a fish head. Someone from the local fish processing plant may have dumped a bunch of fish on the beach for the foxes but it is also possible that the parents dragged the fish here from wherever the fish scraps are dumped:

A chase:

These guys took a break from playfighting but then the one on the right batted its sib and in the process lost its balance and toppled over (the following photo):

Next few photos: Mom’s home!  The adult female showed up and the pups mobbed her. They were so excited to see her—lots of bouncing and tail-wagging. She nursed them for a bit (I think they had to take turns; too many to fit at one time) but she soon decided she had had enough and nipped at the kids to chase them off:

A pup checks me out:

19 thoughts on “Readers’ wildlife photos and videos (adorable Arctic fox cubs)”

  6. That was so delightful to watch. They are amazingly cute.
    Thanks for filming them and sharing!

  12. Me thinking…. that’s a lot of little furry things to keep alive and genes to pass on.
    I see I got the lot (pics)now and I will show these vids and shots to my granddaughter. We went to the Auckland Zoo yesterday, all the BIG animals were out basking in the winter sun.
    Thanks for the furry treat.

  15. Thank you for this, Bruce! And thank you Jerry for taking the time and trouble to reload it and get it to us.
    This was such a joy to watch. To me, those pups hardly resemble a fox. I’ve not seen many in the wild, though. The ones I’ve encountered in our Sonoran Desert look NOTHING like these.The pups look like bears to me. Anyway, very cute and much appreciated. I was wondering if they were aware of your presence. You did mention that one pup “checking you out”. What fun!

  16. Awwww… Such a lot of pups! Twice the usual litter size of 4 to 5. No wonder Mom looks a bit bedraggled. It’s hard to believe that one scrawny vixen could have gestated and fed those 9 healthy pups. Put together, they must weigh more than her!

  18. This was adorable to watch and reading the article about these little guys was much appreciated, thank u. My daughter said they look like little cats almost, she’s 11.

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