A red fox hunts by moving back and forth over an area, finding food by scent and sound, and it can hear small animals it cannot see, such as a mouse under snow or hidden in leaves. It creeps close to its food, the way a cat does, and then pounces: a fox that has found a mouse launches itself into the air at a 45-degree angle and lands on it, pinning it to the ground. Researchers in the Czech Republic observed 84 wild red foxes jump at small prey and recorded 592 jumps. The study found that the foxes strongly preferred to jump toward the north-east, approximately 20 degrees off from magnetic north, and in short vegetation they showed no preferred jump direction. The researchers' favorite idea is that a fox uses the Earth's magnetic field as a range finder when it pounces.

The red fox is mainly a hunter at dusk and at night, and it must rely mainly on hearing to find food. Red foxes have excellent hearing, and a red fox that is hunting a mouse can stand still and listen for it. Red foxes turn their well-developed ears to find the direction a sound comes from, and a red fox can hear low sounds very well, including rodents digging underground. In a lab test, red foxes heard pure tones from 51 Hz to 48 kHz, a range of almost 10 octaves. Researchers who tested red fox hearing found its range and sensitivity combine the hearing abilities of a dog and a cat, and the absolute sensitivity of red fox hearing is one of the best that has been described in mammals so far. A red fox also has excellent senses of vision, smell and touch.

Red fox home ranges vary widely by place; in Connecticut, the normal home range is approximately 2 to 4 square miles, and in Colorado a typical range is five to ten square miles, depending on food. In New York, home ranges vary from 57.5 hectares to 768 hectares, in Ontario farmland they averaged 900 hectares, and in the Arctic they are as large as 3,400 hectares. A red fox with kits usually stays within a mile of its den while the kits are growing up. How big a red fox's home range is depends on its habitat and on how much food is there, and in New Jersey and other temperate places, red foxes typically range over 2 to 8 square miles. Red foxes mark their home ranges with scent, and a red fox usually stays in the same home range for life.

Most red foxes are monogamous: one male and one female form a pair and raise their young together. A red fox range is held by one adult male and one or two adult females with their young, and some non-breeding female red foxes act as helpers. Red fox kits are nursed for 56 to 70 days, and their parents and older siblings also give them solid food. Newborn red fox kits stay at the den for the first month, and the mother and her kits stay together until the autumn after the kits are born. Red foxes are old enough to have kits of their own at approximately 10 months of age; parental care continues until the young foxes reach adult size, at 6 to 7 months of age in New Jersey. Red foxes can disperse, or move away to a new area, as far as almost 400 km, or as near as 10 km, and male red foxes in Iowa and Illinois moved a mean of 18 miles (29 km) from where they were born.

Cross foxes are a color form of the red fox, with reddish brown fur, a black stripe down the back and another across the shoulders, and silver foxes are a color form that range from strong silver to nearly black. It is not certain that red foxes are native to North America; European red foxes were introduced in the southeast around 1750. Red foxes were introduced to Australia in the late 1800s and have spread through much of it. Red foxes are now found in most habitat types, including places people have greatly changed, and a red fox has a potential life span of 15 years, but few wild foxes survive more than 4 to 6 years. As of November 2026, overall, red fox populations are stable and have expanded their range in response to human changes in habitats.

Words to know

• magnetic: like a magnet
• vegetation: plants
• hectares: land area units
• monogamous: one mate pair