The red fox is the largest of the Vulpes species, and red foxes have the widest distribution of any canid, which means they live over more of the world than any other member of the dog family; 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; 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. Red foxes are now found in most habitat types, including places people have greatly changed, and as of November 2026, overall, red fox populations are stable and have expanded their range in response to human changes in habitats.

Red foxes use a variety of calls, facial expressions and scent to talk to each other, near and far, and they mark their home ranges with scent; most red foxes are monogamous: one male and one female form a pair and raise their young together. Red fox groups always have one breeding male, though that male may also seek mating outside the group, and a red fox range is held by one adult male and one or two adult females with their young; some non-breeding female red foxes act as helpers; female red foxes may breed at 10 months of age, but not all females breed in their first year. Both the mother and the father red fox help take care of the young, and while the mother stays with the newborn kits, the father brings her food; the mother and her kits stay together until the autumn after the kits are born.

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; it can also hear small animals it cannot see, such as a mouse under snow or hidden in leaves. Red foxes turn their well-developed ears to find the direction a sound comes from, and they 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.

A red fox hunts by moving back and forth over an area, finding food by scent and sound; it creeps close to its food, the way a cat does, and then pounces; a red 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; they found that the foxes strongly preferred to jump toward the north-east, approximately 20 degrees off from magnetic north, and that in short vegetation the foxes 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; one expert on the magnetic sense of birds called the fox findings speculative, saying the explanation seems plausible only because there is hardly any other mechanism that indicates directions.

Home ranges differ widely from place to place, and how big a red fox's home range is depends on its habitat and on how much food is there. In Connecticut the normal home range is approximately 2 to 4 square miles, in Colorado a typical range is five to ten square miles depending on food, in New York ranges vary from 57.5 hectares to 768 hectares, and in the Arctic they are as large as 3,400 hectares; red foxes with GPS collars in Ladakh, India, had an average home range of 22.40 square kilometers. In Ontario farmland, red fox home ranges averaged 900 hectares, and a red fox with kits usually stays within a mile of its den while the kits are growing up; a red fox usually stays in the same home range for life, and it has a potential life span of 15 years, but few wild foxes survive more than 4 to 6 years.

Words to know

• canid: dog family member
• magnetic: like a magnet
• speculative: not proven
• vegetation: plants