Scientists 'Speechless' at Arctic Fox's Epic Trek:
A young Arctic fox has walked across the ice from Norway's Svalbard islands to northern Canada in an epic journey, covering 3,506 km (2,176 miles) in 76 days.
"The fox's journey has left scientists speechless," according to Greenland's Sermitsiaq newspaper.
Researchers at Norway's Polar Institute fitted the young female with a GPS tracking device and freed her into the wild in late March last year on the east coast of Spitsbergen, the Svalbard archipelago's main island.
The fox was under a year old when she set off west in search of food, reaching Greenland just 21 days later - a journey of 1,512 km - before trudging forward on the second leg of her trek.
She was tracked to Canada's Ellesmere Island, nearly 2,000 km further, just 76 days after leaving Svalbard.
[...] What amazed the researchers was not so much the length of the journey as the speed with which the fox had covered it - averaging just over 46 km (28.5 miles) a day and sometimes reaching 155 km.
"We couldn't believe our eyes at first. We thought perhaps it was dead, or had been carried there on a boat, but there were no boats in the area. We were quite thunderstruck," Eva Fuglei of the Polar Institute told Norway's NRK public broadcaster.
By way of comparison, a standard marathon is approximately 43.7 km. There is an animation (Javascript required) showing her journey over the period.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 03 2019, @07:11AM (1 child)
She has obviously been recruited by the Russians, and is on a mission to infiltrate the US! We gotta find that fox!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGu6v2OjW8s [youtube.com]
(That particular video may not be safe for work, but it's Youtube so it isn't "bad".)
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday July 04 2019, @09:09AM
Naah, she was on her way to a Fox service center to, quote, "get this fscking GPS thing off of me".