You're invisible but I'll eat you anyway
I'm a fox. I'm hungry. I want a meal. My food, however, is buried 3 feet down, deep in the snow, hiding. It's alive, in motion, and very small, being a mouse. So how does an above-ground fox catch an underground mouse? Well, the answer is nothing short of astonishing.
Think about this ... an ordinary fox can stalk a mole, mouse, vole or shrew from a distance of 25 feet, which means its food is making a barely audible rustling sound, hiding almost two car lengths away. And yet our fox hurls itself into the air — in an arc determined by the fox, the speed and trajectory of the scurrying mouse, any breezes, the thickness of the ground cover, the depth of the snow — and somehow (how? how?), it can land straight on top of the mouse, pinning it with its forepaws or grabbing the mouse's head with its teeth.
Well, sometimes they miss ;)
Read & learn the Secrets Of Snow-Diving Foxes:
http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/01/03/259136596/youre-invisible-but-ill-eat-you-anyway-secrets-of-snow-diving-foxes
Watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4dr4p9G1Qw
Do foxes use the Earth’s magnetic field as a targeting system?
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/01/11/foxes-use-the-earths-magnetic-field-as-a-targeting-system/#.WFjUI7nn670
#biodiveristy #redfox #huntingtricks #wintermeal #coolcritters
So when we set up human things in their area, machines, motors, people yapping and banging around, we probably really mess with their ability to find food. Yet another reason we can't just spread out all over the place.
ReplyDeleteI had a Malamute, Springer Spaniel mix that was very successful with this move here in Tahoe, pulling up moles from several feet below.
ReplyDeleteHas somebody been catching up on their BBC Planet Earth II? ;)
ReplyDelete