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Rodents Were the Most Frequent Food Remains in Red Fox Scats from Kashmir

Research · Ecology

What does a red fox eat in autumn in the Kashmir Himalaya? In Limber Wildlife Sanctuary, researchers examined 33 scats collected between September and November 2025. They found traces of 12 food categories, with rodents appearing most often. The samples also contained plants, birds, insects, remains from large mammals, and materials associated with people.

To identify the food, the researchers sorted remains from the scats and examined mammal hairs under a microscope, comparing their surface scales and internal structures with reference specimens. Rodent remains appeared in 15 of the 33 scats (45.5%). Plant matter appeared in 27.3%, and bird and insect remains each appeared in 24.2%. These figures show how often a category occurred in a scat, not how much of the foxes’ food it represented: one scat could contain several categories. Rodents made up 22.1% of all recorded food-category occurrences, the largest share, but that measure also does not show the weight or volume eaten.

A varied diet, including remains of large animals

Among the larger animals, remains identified as a goral (Naemorhedus goral) occurred in 21.2% of scats, markhor (Capra falconeri) in 15.2%, and sheep in 12.1%. Remains of a langur (Semnopithecus ajax) appeared in 9.1%. Cow and goat remains each appeared in 6.1%. The researchers also found human-associated materials—cloth, paper and plastic—in 9.1% of the samples. The bird remains could not be identified more specifically.

The range of findings is consistent with foxes feeding opportunistically on different available foods. The large-animal remains do not show that foxes killed those animals. Given the size of goral and langur, the authors suggest the foxes may have scavenged carcasses, possibly those left by larger predators such as leopards. The scats cannot establish how the animals died, however.

This autumn survey provides a local snapshot of red fox (Vulpes vulpes) diet in Limber Wildlife Sanctuary. Rodents were the most frequently detected category, but the remains also point to a broader mix of foods, including large animals and human-associated material. The findings suggest dietary flexibility, while the 33 scats from one season cannot show how the foxes’ diet changes through the year or how important each food is overall.

Sources and image credit

  1. Autumn diet of the Red Fox Vulpes vulpes in Limber Wildlife Sanctuary, Kashmir Himalaya, IndiaPrimary journal article page; includes the publication date, abstract, DOI and article licence.
  2. Full-text HTML of the articlePrimary article text reviewed for sampling dates, methods, results, interpretation and limitations.

Image: Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Representative photograph. · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Source

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