What goes bump in the night? What is lurking in the shadows? What are the noises in the dark? Britain’s cities and towns have become surprisingly rich in wildlife, with populations of wild parakeets, and roaming red deer in London to colonies if grey seals and pods of bottlenose dolphins in Inverness. Some of Britain’s wildlife has made its home where we make ours.

The night time regulars are the urban foxes and badgers that have carved their own niches in man’s urban environment; despite this amazing ability to adapt to this way of life it has affected the creatures that now stalk our streets.

The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) are one of Britain’s most numerous mammals, with an estimated 33,000 of them living within the towns and cities of the UK. Red foxes started to colonise Britain’s town in the 1930s and 1940s starting in cities such as London and Bristol, more recently they have started colonising other cities including Cambridge and Norwich. Foxes have become more common in the urban environment since the 1940s with up to 12 adult foxes per square kilometre being recorded compared with the rural highs of 7 animals. A rural fox may have to include 15 square miles in its home range. By contrast, an urban fox may only need 0.1 square miles.

Red foxes living in an urban environment have developed a narrower snout. The lifespan of the urban foxes is low, with the average expected age of the urban fox sitting at roughly 3 years compared with the 12 year lifespan of its country dwelling cousins, this reduced lifespan is mostly due to deaths caused by road accidents accounting for an estimated 60% with illness also being a large contributor.

Food

Foxes have a reputation of scavenging out of bins and eating junk food left on the floor, this is exaggerated. This was shown in studies undertaken in Bristol only 2.7% of households had their bins rifled through. The majority of the urban foxes’ diets contain a wide range of food items including wild food items such as fruit, invertebrates, small mammals and birds as well as deliberate handouts from households. The abundance of food is not a limiting factor for foxes in an urban environment.

Like badgers, squirrels, hedgehogs and rats and other successful urban creatures, foxes are omnivorous indicating that they will eat a large variety of food from plant matter to meat to fungi and more. This generalist diet has allowed the fox to spread into the urban environment as it has not restricted the location of the fox to where its specific food source is found. There is a difference in the diet of the red fox population based on where they are found this is due to the food available in the area where they live. In London, wild mammals such as rats as well as some wild birds including pigeons compose a larger part of the diet than in Bristol. The variety of food also changes seasonally with birds and earthworms being consumed more in the spring, insects in the summer, fruit in autumn and small mammals in the winter.

Public relations

Urban foxes are generally disliked by many people often with elements of fear involved as well as the general dislike due to annoyance and disruption caused by them. There have been incidents of foxes biting a baby and blame for killing penguins in London zoo. The biting behaviour is often misread by humans and is either caused by the foxes fear of the humans involved or through curiosity or exploration. Despite these cases, the behaviour itself is very rare and subject to the temperance of the animal as like humans foxes have differing personalities.

The general dislike for foxes in cities normally due to a mixture of the mess, noise, digging holes and faeces. Often these disruptions are due to domestic pets as well as the foxes and so are exaggerated. The biggest amount of noise created by the foxes is around December and January which is the mating season, with the female vixens screeching. In March the vixens give birth to a litter of cubs usually between 5-10 cubs. Disruption and mess often come later in the year when the cubs are kicked out of home to find their own territories in late summer and autumn where the adolescent foxes act out often causing a mess and exploring where they shouldn’t.

Due to the misinterpretation of the fox’s behaviour, the general dislike for them has got many members of the public asking for populations to be controlled. This is complicated due to a multitude of issues. To start the foxes are protected under a series of wildlife laws meaning that there are very limited ways in which they can be controlled.

Culling or shooting the foxes has been suggested but when one fox is removed from a territory a new one will move in to replace it. This is thought to be due to the constant marking of the foxes territory and when this marking stops the foxes with territories surrounding the original territory will either move in to replace it or the offspring of the surrounding foxes will move in the vacant territory. This colonisation of the vacant territory usually occurs within a matter of days.

Non-destructive methods have been gaining traction within some households as it does not involve the animal being harmed or killed. These methods involve disrupting the foxes usual behaviour moving on the fox to another area of its territory. This can be done using motion activated water sprinklers or lights. The foxes will tend to leave gardens where it is not wanted in favour of gardens where they are not considered a pest, in fact, some individuals feed the foxes or actively encourage their presence.

Britain has some of the densest fox populated cities in the world and there are very few problems relating to the sharing of the habitat with humans. In fact, foxes act as natural pest control reducing the number of rats, feral pigeons and other pest species.