The Dog Family: Arctic and Grey Foxes

Arctic fox

The same generalist habits and adaptability that have allowed foxes to colonise the deserts have also allowed them to evolve to suit one of the other great barren ecosystems: the Arctic tundra. Here, where even wolves are not particularly common, we find what else but the Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus)?

Arctic foxes are truly creatures of cold and desolate habitats. In Europe, they are found only in Norway, Iceland, and the coasts of the White and Barent's seas in northern Russia. Indeed, it is one of only two species of land-dwelling mammal native to Iceland - the other is the wood mouse, although there are some human-introduced animals there as well. Elsewhere Arctic foxes are found right round the coasts of the Arctic Ocean, in northern Siberia, in northern and western Alaska, northern Canada and its islands, and even in Greenland. Despite this wide, multi-continental, distribution, most belong to just one subspecies, although those living in Iceland, Greenland, and Svalbard form one or two distinct subspecies between them, and there are also distinct subspecies on the isolated Pribilof and Commander Islands in the Bering Sea.