Long Pointy Snouts Protect Snow-Diving Foxes From Injury

Some foxes have a unique hunting behavior that they only use in winter: snow diving, where they dive face-first into snow without hurting their noses or breaking their heads.

© by GrrlScientist for Forbes | LinkTr.ee

Eastern American Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes fulvus), Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario. (Credit: Joanne Redwood / CC0)

After it snows in cold climates, rodents burrow through the snow, hidden from the prying eyes of hungry predators, particularly foxes. But some red foxes, Vulpes vulpes, and some Arctic foxes, Vulpes lagopus, use a specialised hunting technique known as “snow diving” or, more properly, as “mousing”. They rely on their keen hearing to pinpoint the precise location of a small prey animal, usually a mouse (or a lemming, in the case of an Artic fox) as it moves under the snow, then they jump high into the air and dive nose-first into the snow at speeds of up to 4 metres per second to catch their dinner by surprise.

Although there have been quite a few studies of water birds and animals such as porpoises and dolphins that dive from air into water, snow diving has not been well-studied.