by Judy Evans

Created on: December 11, 2009   Last Updated: December 15, 2009

The silver fox is not actually silver at all but mostly grey.  The binomial name is Urocyon cinereoargenteus. Urocyon is the Greek word for ‘tailed dog’ and cinereoartenteus is Latin for ‘silver’ or ‘grey’.

The genus Urocyon is part of the family Canidae which comprises dog- and wolf-like mammals. Animals belonging to Urocyon are among the most primitive of the canids. The fox or Vulpes genus has 12 species and the silver fox has a further sixteen subspecies. Male foxes may be known as dogs or reynards and females as vixens. The grey or silver fox is found throughout most of the southern half of North America from southern Canada and down to northern Venezuela and Colombia.

The silver fox has very keen senses and under normal conditions hunts either at night or around dawn and dusk. It is a solitary hunter and eats almost anything.  Rabbits and other small mammals are on the menu, also birds, fruits and insects.  During late summer and into autumn, grasshoppers and crickets form an important part of their diet. It makes its dens in clefts, small caves, hollow logs and trees and even rock piles. Dens are rarely used outside the breeding season.

The mature silver fox weighs approximately 9 to 11 pounds and may have a length of 3 to 3 ½ feet. This includes the 15 inch tail! Height ranges from 14 to 15 inches. It has a single coat of coarse fur. On the upper part of the body, the hairs are banded in white and black.  This gives the grizzled or ‘silver’ appearance. The sides of the neck, belly and legs are a reddish-tan. The feet, legs and backs of the ears are rust coloured. The ears and tail are tipped in black and the ‘mane’ on the neck is also black. The ventral surfaces of the abdomen and chest, the cheeks, and the insides of the ears are white or an off-white. The ears are quite prominent and erect. The body is thick and long and, for a member of the fox family, the legs are relatively short. The fox has a long narrow snout and the tail, known as a brush, is very bushy.

They mate for life and mark out a range with urine and fecal deposits. The gestation period is around two months and 4 to 10 black kits are born. The kits are born blind, dark-skinned and without fur. Within 10 to 12 days, they have grown fuzzy fur and the eyes have opened. While the kits are young and helpless, the vixen will not venture far from the den. They are weaned at six weeks. At four months of age,

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