Journal of
Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 September 2018 | 10(10): 12418–12421
Foraging habits of the
Red Fox Vulpes vulpes
(Mammalia: Carnivora: Canidae)
in the Himalaya, India
Aishwarya Maheshwari
Banda University of Agriculture and Technology, Near New Circuit
House, Banda, Uttar Pradesh 210001, India
doi: https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.3968.10.10.12418-12421
Editor: L.A.K. Singh, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. Date
of publication: 26 September 2018 (online & print)
Manuscript details: Ms # 3968 |
Received 22 December 2017 | Final received 05 June 2018 | Finally accepted 20
August 2018
Citation: Maheshwari, A. (2018). Foraging habits of the Red Fox Vulpes vulpes
(Mammalia: Carnivora: Canidae)
in the Himalaya, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 10(10): 12418–12421; https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.3968.10.10.12418-12421
Copyright: © Maheshwari 2018. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License. JoTT allows
unrestricted use of this article in any medium, reproduction and distribution
by providing adequate credit to the authors and the source of publication.
Funding: The Rufford
Foundation.
Competing interests: The author declares no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Rufford
Foundation for financially supporting the work.
The Department of Wildlife Protection, Jammu & Kashmir is
particularly thanked for their permission, interest and support during the
work. I thank my colleagues at the
Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun and Banda University of Agriculture and
Technology, Banda for their continuous encouragement and support while writing
the manuscript. I am thankful to Kazim for his continuous assistance during the
fieldwork. I extend my gratitude to Mukesh and anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback
in improving the manuscript.
The Red Fox Vulpes
vulpes is one of the most widely distributed and
extremely adaptable carnivore in the world (Macdonald
& Reynolds 2004), and found in a variety of habitats ranging from the
arctic to temperate deserts (Macdonald & Reynolds 2004). It is an omnivorous opportunistic predator and feeds on
essentially anything easily available or small enough to catch, from the
wilderness to cities (Harris & Smith 1987; Jędrzejewski
& Jędrzejewska 1992; Scott et al. 2014). Small mammals, birds and insects are the
major food materials recorded in the Red Fox diet (Goszczynski
1974; Meisner et al. 2014). Red Foxes are mostly nocturnal (Ables 1969; Macdonald 1980; Travainiet
et al. 1993; Weber et al. 1994) but their activity pattern and movement may
overlap with the availability of forage and level of disturbance (Macdonald
1980; Lovari et al. 1994; König
2008). Keeping this in view, the present
study is an attempt to understand if the nocturnal behavior of the Red Fox
alters due to the easy availability of food resources in the daytime.
The study was conducted in 12
villages covering approximately 1,000km2 of Kargil
District with an area of about 14,000km2 (Fig. 1). Kargil is a
mountainous cold desert in Ladakh region with little
or sparse vegetation and represents the biogeographic zone 1B
(Trans-Himalaya-Tibetan Plateau) of India (Rodgers et al. 2000). The general elevation of Kargil
ranges from 2,934–7,410 m with an average elevation of 3,400m (Maheshwari 2016).
Observations on the Red Fox were
recorded during field studies on snow leopards Panthera
uncia and associated species with special
reference to large carnivore-human conflict, conducted from April 2009 to
November 2012 (Maheshwari 2016). Due to the topography and remoteness of the
area, all fieldwork was carried out in the form of discrete field expeditions
that involved camping in the different areas.
Each field survey usually lasted 10–15 days. Altogether, 1,100km were traversed on foot
covering an altitudinal zone of 3,000–5,200 m.
Every sighting of the Red Fox was recorded during the fieldwork, and
interviews were conducted of all the 664 households across 12 villages in the study landscape. Information was gathered on
livestock predation such as species and number of attacks with time and place
of attack by Red Fox during the study period. While collecting data on Red Fox predation on
livestock in order to reduce probability of response bias and avoid
overestimation of livestock predation, protocols under participatory rural appraisal
(PRA) (Maheshwari et al. 2014) were employed by using
the semi-structured interview technique of PRA.
With the help of field assistants data on visual encounters (n=220) of the Red Fox
from April 2009 to November 2012 were gathered.
The maximum sightings were recorded during 15.01 to 18.00hr (45.4%)
followed by 12.01 to 15.00hr (25.9%), 09.01 to 12.00hr (25.4%) and 06.00 to
09.00hr(13.2%). To understand Red Fox
movement during day-light hours in a human dominated
landscape, data were also collected on the availability of food resources,
e.g., free ranging domestic fowls and inattentive young ones of the sheep/
goats in the villages (Image 1). A total of 230 domestic fowls and 74 young ones of the sheep/ goats
were reportedly killed by the Red Fox in Kargil. Of 12 villages, the highest livestock attacks
were recorded in Sapi (15.8%) followed by the
remaining 11 villages (Table 1).
Data obtained from locals on the
time of predation was overlapping with the time of sighting of the Red Fox in
the villages. Most (40.9%) of the
domestic fowls and 35.1% of sheep and goats’ predation events were recorded
during 09:01–12:00 hr followed by 34.3% (domestic
fowls) and 27% (sheep and goats) during 12:01–15:00 hr
(Table 2).
During the day time, when most of
the family members were engaged in domestic work and other livestock grazing,
they set free the fowls and young ones of the sheep and goats to move on their
own and feed upon freely and naturally accessible food. At this point they were vulnerable for predation
by the Red Fox.
Foxes may be found during the day
pursuing prey and resting (Meisner et al. 2014). One breed of fox that is definitely diurnal
is the Island Fox Urocyon littoralis (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
2015). Red Foxes are typically nocturnal
animals, especially inhabiting in and around urban areas, to avoid being seen
or disturbed by humans (Scott et al. 2014).
Local people report that the Red Fox has got accustomed to raiding
villages and houses for food. As it
takes a lot of energy to scare these foxes, some locals are retaliating by
killing the Red Foxes. Anthropogenic
feeding has been reportedly supporting an increase in density of Red Fox range
from 2–30 adults/km2 (Baker et al. 2000; Soulsbury
et al. 2010; Scott et al. 2014) in the urban areas. But in Kargil,
where local communities are primarily agro-pastoral and livestock rearing is
one of the major sources of livelihood, loss of livestock leads to retaliatory
killing (Maheshwari 2016). Thus, similar to other carnivores in the
global scenario, the Red Fox is also a victim of retaliation in Kargil. During the
study five cases of retaliation against the Red Fox were recorded. Besides,
there were two records of road kills during the same period (Image 2). In the absence of a proper mechanism to
monitor and record Red Fox killing at landscape level this study presents only
a fraction of the actual cases of retaliation and road kills. Nevertheless, retaliation and road kills
constitute the major threats to the overall survival of the Red Fox population.
The lack of livestock guarding practices and
poor or no search efforts by people to locate ‘missing’ animals are two of the major factors responsible for
livestock loss in Kargil. The loss of domestic
fowls and livestock constitute one of the major threats to the rural economy
and the Red Fox is one of the major predators in Kargil. Diurnal alteration in foraging behavior of
the Red Fox could be due to competition with the Snow Leopard and Wolf Canis lupus chanco (Maheshwari 2016). About 8.3% livestock loss (2009-2012) was
due to predation by large carnivores, i.e., a total of 1113 heads of livestock
were reportedly killed by wolf (43.6%) followed by unknown predators (31.4%)
and Snow Leopard (21.5%) in the study site, which comes to 2.8% of total annual
livestock losses (Maheshwari 2016). This study adds to the limited information
available on the dynamics of human-Red Fox interaction in Kargil.
The Red Fox is a well-studied
species across the world (Macdonald & Reynolds 2004), but information
regarding its distribution, ecology, and subspecies remains rather limited in
India (Maheshwari et al. 2013). The species in India, which is relatively
better studied among the fox species, is the Indian Fox Vulpes
bengalensis (Home 2005; Kumara & Singh 2012; Maurya et al. 2012).
One of the important notes for future studies could be to gather crucial
baseline information on the status, distribution, ecology and interaction with
human of the other fox species and subspecies (Maheshwari
et al. 2013) in India. This is crucial
in quantifying changes in Red Fox densities due to interface with anthropogenic
dimensions, and develop strategies for conservation management.
Table 1. Red Fox predation on domestic fowls and sheep/ goats
across 12 villages in Kargil
|
Name of village |
Total number of fowl predation |
Total number of sheep and goat predation |
1 |
Bartoo |
14 |
4 |
2 |
Pangbar |
7 |
3 |
3 |
Yarkashing |
15 |
4 |
4 |
Bilching |
4 |
2 |
5 |
Umba |
30 |
9 |
6 |
Ichoo |
12 |
3 |
7 |
Mulbek |
22 |
7 |
8 |
Shergandi |
12 |
1 |
9 |
Fokar |
26 |
9 |
10 |
Kanji |
28 |
12 |
11 |
Sapi |
38 |
10 |
12 |
Wakhah |
22 |
10 |
Total |
230 |
74 |
Table 2. Red Fox predation during different time intervals of
the day
Time interval (hr) |
Domestic fowls |
Sheep and goats |
Total |
06:00–09:00 |
30 (13.0%) |
14 (18.9%) |
44 (14.5%) |
09:01–12:00 |
94 (40.9%) |
26 (35.1%) |
120 (39.5%) |
12:01–15:00 |
79 (34.3%) |
20 (27.0%) |
99 (32.6%) |
15:01–18:00 |
27 (11.7%) |
14 (18.9%) |
41 (13.5%) |
Total numbers |
230 |
74 |
304 |
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