The hill fox (Vulpes vulpes montana),[2] also known as the hill red fox or the Himalayan red fox,[citation needed] is a subspecies of the red fox that is native to parts of the Himalayan Mountain Range and the Karakoram Mountain Range. Its natural range is made up of rocky terrain, low grasslands, and tundra within a temperate climate,[3] although it is occasionally known to build dens near urbanized human areas.[4]
| Hill fox | |
|---|---|
 | |
| A depiction of an individual done by John Gerrard Keulemans in 1890 | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Infraclass: | Placentalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Family: | Canidae |
| Genus: | Vulpes |
| Species: | |
| Subspecies: | V. v. montana |
| Trinomial name | |
| Vulpes vulpes montana Pearson, 1836 | |
| Synonyms | |
| |
Distribution
editThe hill fox has two notable populations: one is in northeastern India, far southern Nepal, and far northern Bangladesh; the other is in portions of far northwestern India, and northeastern Pakistan. Populations may also be present in far southwestern China, and in other areas of the Himalayas.[5]
Researchers also found hill foxes in the Shigar valley of the Karakorum Range, Pakistan and studied their living habits and den locations there. These studies showed that in their resting state 83.33% of the hill foxes had a den in a grass/bare habitat.[4]
Characteristics
editThe hill fox is differentiated from the nominate subspecies by having a smaller body, smaller skull and teeth, and by having rough or coarse hair. Its foot hair is mixed with softer, woolly hair.[6]
Many hill foxes are high altitude animals, and genetic studies have been done in order to understand the evolution of their adaptive mechanisms for high-altitude habitats. Other studies have shown that "many high-altitude animals reduce O₂ demand by suppressing total metabolism to compensate for a reduced cellular O₂ supply as a response to hypoxia".[7] One study used "blood samples obtained from a wild female red fox captured from Lhasa in Tibet, China".[8] With an average elevation of over 3500 m, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the highest plateau in the world,[8] and by analyzing the sequences of this red fox's genes researchers in this study found a gene that corresponds to these foxes' ability to adapt to their environments.
References
edit- ↑ "Vulpes vulpes montana Pearson, 1836". Species+. UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Retrieved 24 November 2025.
- ↑ "Vulpes vulpes montana (Pearson 1836)". The Encyclopedia of Life.
- ↑ ENVPK (2021-05-04). "Ecosystem Zones and Climatic Biomes of Pakistan". Retrieved 2023-06-15.
- 1 2 Zaman, Muhammad; Tolhurst, Bryony; Zhu, Mengyan; Jiang, Guangshun (May 22, 2020). "Den-site selection at multiple scales by the red fox (Vulpes vulpes subsp. montana) in a patchy human-dominated landscape". Global Ecology and Conservation. 23 e01136: 3. Bibcode:2020GEcoC..2301136Z. doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e01136.
- ↑ "Vulpes vulpes montana (Pearson, 1836)". www.gbif.org. Retrieved 2023-06-15.
- ↑ Pocock, Reginald Innes (1941). "The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma: Mammalia Volume 2, Carnivora: Aeluroidea, Arctoidea". The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. 2 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ T, Lyu; X, Yang; H, Zhang (2022). "Comparative transcriptomics of high-altitude Vulpes and their low-altitude relatives". Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 10 999411. Bibcode:2022FrEEv..1099411L. doi:10.3389/fevo.2022.999411.
- 1 2 J, Zhang; H, Zhang; C, Zhao; L, Chen; W, Sha; G, Liu (2015). "The complete mitochondrial genome sequence of the Tibetan red fox (Vulpes vulpes montana)". Mitochondrial DNA. 26 (5): 739–741. doi:10.3109/19401736.2013.845766. PMID 24456141.
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