Budapest, a city of two million people, provides an excellent habitat for many wild animals. Birds are the most numerous, and wild boars are the most noticeable due to their size – even if they stray into the city center, because otherwise, no one but those living in a given neighborhood will notice how many of them live in the outer districts. Nyest is also rarely seen running across the road with a strangely arched back, even though there are plenty of them, car owners could tell you a lot about their damage.
Recently, we can run into red foxes more and more often and in more places, and it is our own experience that the animals are becoming more and more “brave”, or we can say, “cheekier”. In the housing estate in Óbuda, the fox is a regular guest, even at dawn, and in the neighboring streets densely lined with factories, encounters are a daily occurrence while walking the dog. Moreover, at the end of winter, mating calls and calls were often heard. Since then, there have been two of them, and the puppies will probably come slowly.
They have apparently lost all their inhibitions, you have to approach them 5-7 meters away to jump at all, and they even dare to tease. The nearly 30-kilogram dog barking at him by the collar barks from a few steps away, I throw pebbles at him to get him to stop, but he doesn’t. He “laughs in his fist” at the sight of our efforts, sniffs, sits down opposite us, and even urinates right in front of our noses with serious signal value. He knows perfectly well that I won’t let the dog go anyway, but after all, this courage is no wonder:
From the point of view of our history, this scream that sounds beyond the grave late at night in the deserted neighborhood is a blood-curdling experience at first hearing:
What are red foxes looking for in Budapest and other cities? How should we behave towards predators, and should we be afraid of them at all? Dr. Miklós Heltai we asked a university professor, the director of the Institute of Wildlife Management and Nature Conservation of the Hungarian University of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
It’s like they’ve been invited
It is not scientifically possible to state whether the number of urban red foxes is increasing or not, for a very simple reason: we do not know how many there were 10, 20 or 50 years ago, and there is no such research today. The appearance of wild animals in cities is an accelerating process throughout Europe, and the red fox is at the forefront of this.
It is such a well-known phenomenon in Budapest that for over 20 years there has been a report from one of the embassies that foxes come to “clean up” after garden parties as precisely as if they knew about the event in advance
Miklós Heltai tells 24.hu.
The reason for moving in is different for each species. Many people “consciously” become city dwellers – mainly bird species can be mentioned here, especially the black thrush – because it is simply worth it for them to live near people: there is more and easier access to food, there are fewer predators, there are many places to hide, they thrive better than in the wild . However, the fox accidentally mixes in an urban environment. He comes and goes, he is curious like around a hen house, he follows, for example, food scraps thrown from trains, and all of a sudden he finds himself in Keleti. These are the so-called gray corridors, but there are also green versions, when, for example, you go along the bottom of a valley and come to a realization in one of the districts of Buda.
He knows for a fact that he has nothing to fear
For many of them, Budapest is a death trap, as it is prone to traffic, electric shocks, poisons, etc. even millions of years of evolution cannot prepare the inhabitants of forests and fields. Some of them find their way out and return from time to time, because the easy food provided by waste is a huge attraction. The third category includes “our foxes”, they not only survived in the city, but also no longer want to return, instead they become urban foxes due to the so-called fitness benefits mentioned above. They are great at inventing themselves, and if they find a pair, they multiply, and the cubs grow up to be urban foxes.
All in all, however, it is not by chance that the fox earned the nickname Ravaszd in Hungarian folk tradition. He learns quickly and adapts perfectly, while his dexterity can almost be compared to that of a cat, he balances in heights without any problems, climbs onto the roof of the house if necessary, and moves quickly and skillfully. It is an extremely intelligent animal:
The urban fox knows very well that it does not have to be afraid of humans, and the prowling dog is on a leash
the professor points out.
And that’s not all: research in England has shown that urban populations also adapt genetically to the human environment, in their case the lower jaw was transformed in order to search in waste. A similar study was not carried out in our country with foxes, but with wild boars, in which Miklós Heltai and his colleagues found that certain chromosome 18 shows a change in the Buda pigs. And the layman’s jaw drops when Professor Heltai adds: it is responsible for stress tolerance and sleep regulation.
Are they dangerous for us?
The red fox is not a large animal, even the larger specimens slightly exceed a body weight of 10 kilograms, but it is still a medium-sized predator. What we can be sure of is that not a single fox will directly attack us, he didn’t lose his mind to fight with the deadliest creature in the world, who is also a good 5-10 times bigger than him.
Of course, we’re not afraid of the taste, but of its bite: generations have grown up with the axiom that if the fox doesn’t run away from us, if it even approaches, then it’s definitely lost. However, this is no longer true in this form, in many places even healthy foxes seem extremely friendly, or more precisely, they are not afraid of humans in the least.
It’s our fault, because they sometimes feed them because they’re cute, and because they must be hungry, and this is how many people express their love for nature. Miklós Heltai emphasizes: it is a terrible problem when a wild animal connects humans with food.
Dependence develops in him towards us, under the influence of delicious snacks and positive experiences, he removes all his fears, and conflicts arise from this. No one wants to pet the fox or take a selfie with it, because even though it looks tame, it is still an unpredictable beast: it can catch and bite you. If rabies is not a daily problem, the animal can introduce many pathogens or parasites into our body with its saliva. By the way, the same problem is also with their excrement, from where the parasites can enter our homes through the mediation of the family dogs, which is obviously not good for the dog either, but also risky for us.
The fox is a wild animal. I don’t feed it, I don’t attract it: it’s better for both foxes and humans if we keep each other apart and avoid each other even on the streets of big cities
– summarizes Miklós Heltai.
In order to minimize possible conflicts, do not leave food outside for stray animals, do not throw away leftover food, because this is the source of all problems in the relationship between humans and wild animals.
2024-03-23 10:00:25