Red foxes originated in the Middle East, then radiated out to the Arctic Circle, Europe, North Africa, the Asiatic steppes, India, and Japan.
A recent extensive global phylogeny of red foxes that included about 1,000 samples from across the species’ range found that red foxes originated in the Middle East, then radiated out.
The red fox has the widest geographical range of any member of the order Carnivora, covering nearly 70 million square kilometers and being distributed widely across the entire northern hemisphere from the Arctic Circle to southern North America, Europe, North Africa, the Asiatic steppes, India, and Japan. Red foxes have also been introduced elsewhere.
• Image | © Minette Layne, Some Rights Reserved, (CC BY-NC 2.0)
• Sources | (Fox, 2007; Hoffmann & Sillero-Zubiri, 2016; MacDonald & Reynolds, 2005; Statham, et al., 2014)
