Arctic Fox

The furry artic fox and the powerful polar bear both feast upon a delicious dinner of fresh seal meat. Nat Geo Wild : animals.nationalgeographic.com

The dainty Arctic fox is common almost all over Svalbard. Its diet consists of seabirds, eggs and carrion. It tends to tag along behind the polar bear helping itself to the leftovers of the bear’s haul. In spring, seal pups are an important source of nourishment. It catches and kills them on the ice in the fjords. The Arctic fox can cover large distances looking for food, and it roams way out onto the ice floes. A fox that had been labelled in Svalbard was found as far away as in Novaja Zemlja, in Russia. There are two colours for Arctic fox: the “blue” variety has a uniformly silvery blue pelt all year round and is fairly rare, whereas the “white” fox has a greyish brown back, and an off-white abdomen during summer though it is all white during winter.