Hungry fox makes a bizarre noise that's a mixture of a squawk, a scream, and a meow

Originally published at: Hungry fox makes the wildest noises

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Obligs

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If you think hearing that is fun, try sleeping with one of these in your backyard death metal screaming for a mate at 2 in the morning

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I’d never heard a fox before I moved to London. Imagine my surprise when I awoke to what was clearly two toddlers in a to-the-death knife fight behind a dumpster at 2am.

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had no idea that foxes (previously) could make sounds that are a bizarre mixture of a squawk, a scream, and a cat’s meow.

Came to say much the same - I hear this all the time (and louder and longer variations on it) at night when they are out mating, cubs trying to get fed, etc.

It literally sounds like violent bloody murder is being committed on children - for hours on end.

(Red foxes here in the UK)

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Had a family of foxes living under our deck a few years ago. Many sleepless nights as a result.

Closed off the deck but really miss seeing the cute kits.

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I hear this sometimes from my backyard…

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This sound is otherworldly. We’ll get them yelling and screaming at each other on the mountain beside us a lot, especially this time of year. It sounds like someone is brutally attacking animals with a machete.

On topic, my favourite description of foxes is that they’ve got dog hardware and cat software.

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Colin Jost Shrug GIF by Saturday Night Live

Also on topic…

:fox_face:

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Sounds like Ebirah Ebirah roars (youtube.com)

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It’s a real shame that the Soviet fox domestication experiments were never entirely successful.

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Lynx sound like a horror show.

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Gray Fox: "Fuck me for having to make these annoying noises… but apparently, I have to!"

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That’s my dad’s back yard all the time, which butts up against a hay field.


This past summer I had at least two different foxes visit multiple times. One hung out for over an hour, killed a bird in a bush, and then left. The other birds were all alerting and a few dove at it, it was like wild kingdom.


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It sometimes only takes the movement of a single pebble to start an avalanche. :laughing:

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We sometimes see coyotes (and bobcats!) here in the well-urbanized Santa Clarita Valley, but I have yet to hear coyotes howling. Perhaps they’ve learned to be even stealthier for survival here?

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We’ve been watching SaveAFox vids for a couple years now. I’d just watched the video posted here on youtube the other day,

Here’s a link to the SaveAFox youtube channel, for those of us who avoid/dislike tiktok and faceschnook:

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Foxes make an… interesting variety of sounds. I was familiar with the European fox call that sounds like a woman screaming, but when foxes moved into my SF Bay area neighborhood, I was hearing them for weeks and wondering what the hell they were. Eventually they made something like the more familiar red fox vocalization, at which point I realized what they were, even though we’d never had foxes anywhere near this area before, in the middle of an urban area.

I notice US closed captioning for British murder mysteries, where fox calls are added as a standard part of night-time sound design, often describes them as “woman screaming.” (Which becomes very confusing for the plot if you’re relying on the subtitles.)

Although I sometimes think of them as the opposite - they’ve got those vertically-slit pupils, and I realized they were getting into my back yard by climbing trees, which they’re apparently quite good at.

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I don’t recall hearing fox calls until watching Midsomer Murders, but having read descriptions, I immediately recognized them and gleefully hipped my delighted mom.

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