Arctic fox runs from Svalbard to Canada in four months
Arctic foxes, along with polar bears, are the only land predators that also travel on the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean. Their dense winter coat helps them to survive the icy temperatures. But little is known about the animals’ migrations. Now a female has surprised researchers: the animal covered a distance of over 4,400 km between Svalbard and Canada in just four months.
The female, equipped with a transmitter on Svalbard, had set off on her way north on March 1, 2018, after growing up for more than a year in the area of the 14th of July glacier on the west coast of Spitsbergen. First, the animal moved north, but met only water in the north of Svalbard. Forced to turn east, the female then moved north at Nordaustlandet and left the Svalbard archipelago on March 26. The fox then ran north to avoid a wedge of open water and turned west. Already around April 10, the vixen reached the north coast of Greenland. For the next two months, she moved back out onto the ice and then back to the Greenland coast. The fox then left Greenland on June 6 and reached Ellesmere Island on June 10. The female then settled there further north on July 1, 2018, after a 4,415-kilometer migration.
The performance of the vixen surprised even the researchers who supervised the observation project. The scientist Eva Fuglei, the main author of the scientific work, said, ” We could hardly believe it.” It was not only the distance, but also the speed of the animal that surprised. With an average daily performance of about 46.3 kilometers, the small predator was incredibly fast on the move. “This is the highest speed ever recorded for an Arctic fox,” Fuglei continues. The female also set a new record for maximum daily distance. On the Greenland ice sheet she covered 155 km in one day, probably without food. Because there is not much to get there.
Eva Fuglei also believes that the animal will change its eating habits in its new home, on Ellesmere Island. This is because foxes living on Ellesmere Island are mainly after lemmings, which are not found on Svalbard. Apparently, the vixen had no trouble changing her diet. Because between July and February 2019, the fox’s movement pattern could still be tracked. After that, the life of the transmitter, which had been attached to a collar since March 2017, ended. The vixen is a so-called “blue morph”, whose fur remains dark all year round, and which stays and hunts mainly in coastal areas.
On the scientific significance of the Arctic fox’s feat, the authors believe that this is the first recorded crossing of an Arctic fox from one ecosystem to another. Until now, only genetic studies could show that although there is a lively exchange between Arctic fox populations and that immigration to the Svalbard archipelago is higher than emigration. But until now nothing was known about the speed of the animals on the ice or about the routes.
Dr Michael Wenger, PolarJournal
