Urban foxes no more cunning than rural ones, researchers find | Animals

From rooting through our rubbish to stealing shoes and garden gloves, urban foxes are renowned for their intrepid behaviour. But although city life may have made them bolder than their country cousins, they are no more cunning – and most are likely to be too lazy to persevere at a problem to obtain food, research suggests.

Globally, red foxes are among the most successful carnivores, and the number living in British towns and cities has exploded in recent years. But while some researchers have suggested that urbanisation might be making foxes and other wildlife bolder and smarter, few studies have directly tested how they compare with rural foxes when confronted with the same challenges.

To investigate their boldness and willingness to solve problems, Dr Blake Morton at the University of Hull and his colleagues presented wild and urban foxes with puzzle feeders – simple contraptions that required them to lift, pull or rotate a lid or lever to access food – at 104 locations across England and Scotland, including parks, gardens, woodland, meadows and farmland.

Morton said: “These were all devices that we had tested with foxes, so we knew they were able to solve these puzzles – but we wanted to know whether or not they were willing to do it.”

The study, published in Animal Behaviour, found that foxes at most locations acknowledged the puzzles, but only those at 31 locations touched them, while foxes in just 12 locations gained access to the food.

Although urban foxes were more likely to physically interact with the puzzle feeders, suggesting they might be bolder, there was no difference in their willingness to persist to try to gain access to the food inside.

“Although we found a tendency for London foxes to behave bolder and exploit the puzzles, many other foxes in our study were too shy or unmotivated to exploit them despite having access for up to two weeks,” Morton said.

“Just because you’re a city fox doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be a bold fox, and just because you’re a bold fox doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to raid bins. I think that’s a really important reminder that animals, just like people, are very nuanced in their behaviour.”

When they left the same food out for them to access freely, all of the foxes ate it. “Our conclusion is that they do like the food, but they don’t like the effort,” said Morton.

He hopes the study will challenge the common stereotype of urban foxes as bin-raiding menaces. Although this sometimes happens, “we don’t think that most foxes are willing to raid bins – and if they do, there’s probably something else going on that drives them to do it”, he said.

“Based on our study, we think that sources of food that are very low risk, and very easy to get access to – so things that don’t have lids or don’t have any physical barriers – are what a fox might love.”