Arctic fox stuns scientists by trekking 3500 km in 76 days
Rome: An arctic fox has amazed scientists by walking nearly 3500 kilometres across the Arctic from the Svalbard archipelago of Norway to Canada.
It is not just the distance that the fox trekked that is remarkable, but the pace at which it travelled - completing the journey in just 76 days and walking as much as 154 km in a single day.
Scientists were able to track the fox because it was fitted with a device attached to a ring around its neck.
The young female fox, which had not even reached its first birthday, set out from the island of Spitsbergen in March last year.
Three weeks later it reached Greenland, before continuing on its odyssey across sea ice and tundra to Canada's Ellesmere Island, arriving in early July.
It travelled an average distance of 45km a day foraging for food as it went, but that increased to 154km when it crossed the flat ice sheets of northern Greenland.
"This is the fastest movement rate recorded for this species," scientists said in a paper published by Polar Research, the journal of the Norwegian Polar Institute.
Researchers were so astounded at the animal's journey that at first they thought it had died and somehow been carried to Canada on a ship.
"We were really surprised at the speed the fox travelled," Dr Arnaud Tarroux, a researcher from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, said.
Sadly, the ultimate fate of the fox is unknown - the tracking device stopped working in February.
"We think it probably settled in Canada that is where it spent last summer and autumn," said Tarroux. "Most likely it is still there."
Telegraph, London