There are many types of foxes, but there is one kind of fox that is very unusual, they look stupid, they look like a young man who has just come out of town, and honestly they are not at all like the kind of eccentric foxes we usually know. It's the "Tibetan Fox."
Although the Tibetan fox looks honest, but on the plateau do not provoke it, the Tibetan fox is a fierce carnivore. So after encountering it, you can wait and see from afar.
In the plateau, grassland and desert grassland at an altitude of 2000-2600 meters, it is the main living place of the Tibetan fox, which is more common in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China.
Compared with other foxes, the Tibetan fox has obvious characteristics, its face shape is square, and other foxes are pointed faces. This is also the reason why it looks stupid, science shows that the internal skeleton of the Tibetan fox is the same as the usual fox, so why is their face shape square, it turns out that they are only because the hair on the face is more square, so it looks like the face is also this shape.
The Tibetan fox is relatively small, weighing only about 3.8 to 4.6 kg, which is a relatively small carnivore in the local area. In the harsh plateau living environment, there are several times larger than the Tibetan fox carnivore such as: lions, tigers, wolves, and even vultures flying in the sky, etc., the Tibetan fox can not withstand the attack of these large animals, it can only hide in the grass and woods, but because of the limited woods, the hiding place of the Tibetan fox is reduced, in order to survive, they usually build their nests underground, and the provider of this nest is the Food "Marmot" of the Tibetan fox.
Marmots are clustered burrowing, with strong digging ability, deep and complex tunnels, mostly dug under rocky slopes and gully shrublands. Although they were robbed of the cave by the Tibetan fox, there was no way, who let them be one of the food of the Tibetan fox, if they resisted, it would definitely become a good meal, so in order to save their lives, they could only escape.
However, marmots are not the main food source of the Tibetan fox, another organism, the plateau pika is the main food, if the Tibetan fox needs to feed the cubs, then about 10 pikas need to be hunted every day to meet the needs of survival, but the plateau pika has a strong reproductive ability, so it can always provide a stable food source for the Tibetan fox
The mating time of the Tibetan fox is in the spring of each year, and the newborn cubs are very fragile and have no viability like other small animals, so they must stay quietly in the nest and wait for their parents to come back and feed them.
Tibetan foxes are also very special in breeding, they are not polygamous like other mammals, the males basically do not raise offspring, only the females take care of the cubs. But the Tibetan fox is different, and the Tibetan fox is typically monogamous like humans, unless there is a special reason such as the departure of the spouse.
Tibetan foxes will generally give birth to 2-5 per litter, if the food storage is more sufficient, the newborn baby will be healthier, when the food is insufficient, they will focus on feeding 1-2 of the healthier pups, the remaining unhealthy cubs can only starve to death.
So far, the Tibetan fox is not in danger of being extinct, but it is still listed as a national second-level protected animal in China. Because they are very important in the local ecological chain, if there is no Local Tibetan Fox, then the local highland pika may be flooded. Therefore, the Tibetan fox is still very important to the local ecological environment!