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WHAT THE FOX?! Arctic fox makes 3,506-km trip from Svalbard to Canada in 76 days – more than a marathon per day

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All the talk (and reality) of the alarming shrinkage of the Arctic sheet whizzed right past a rather speedy Arctic fox who at the end of March of last year began what researchers say is a record-fast 3,506-kilometer journey from Svalbard to Greenland to Ellesmere Island in Canada in 76 days – a rate of 46 kilometers per day.

foxmap
The 3,506-kilometer journey of an Arctic from Spitsbergen to Canada last spring is shown in red. Map by the Norwegian Polar Institute.

“We didn’t think it was true,” said Eva Fuglei, a Norwegian Polar Institute researcher helping following the animal that had been fitted with a tracking collar and co-author of an article in the institute’s journal about the trip., in a separate institute interview. “Could the fox have been found dead, the collar taken off and now aboard a boat? But no, there are no boats that go so far up in the ice. So we just had to keep up with what the fox did.”

Fuglei and Arnaud Tarroux from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research conducted the study resulting in the journal article, which notes there are currently few isolated groups of Arctic foxes. But the rapidly vanishing sea ice may change that.

The fox covered up to 155 kilometers a day during the trek across land, glaciers and the sea ice that served as a trans-continental bridge. It’s the timer researchers have documented in detail an Arctic fox crossing different continents and ecosystems int the Arctic, and the first documented journey from Svalbard to Canada.

It set out from Spitsbergen on March 26, 2018, and reached Greenland 21 days later. The fox made two two-day stops, which Fuglei said might have occurred for a few reasons.

“The sea ice can be inhospitable and demanding to find food for a fox,” she said. “But the sea ice is also dynamic with large and small cracks that open and close in a few days, and in connection with these there can be food– seabirds, for example. The cracks may have been so large that the fox couldn’t cross over them until after a few days. The fox may also have hidden out for snowstorms and let it snow taper down in anticipation of better weather.”

To the surprise of researchers, the fox kept going after reaching land again, crossing the northern part of the country and setting out again on a relatively short sea ice crossing to Ellesmere Island on June 6. Four days later it reached the island. The tracking collar stopped working in early February of this year so researchers won’t be able to follow its fate.

“But it will definitely have to change its food habits,” Fuglei said, noting the Arctic fox population in Ellesmere Island eats mostly lemmings, while the Svalbard foxes hunt in marine environments  including scavenging the remnants of carcasses killed polar bears.

 

 

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.
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