University of Bristol Fox Territory boundary study reveals how scent marking is critical in defining boundaries between foxes..........If a fox does not continually scent mark, there will be intrusions into it's territory by neighboring foxes..............The Scientists who conducted this extensive 30-year study felt that their conclusions might shed light on how bands of early humans created boundaries between themselves and neighboring tribes

Fox Tactics Shed Light On Territorial Behavior

Territorial patterns of urban foxes are formed and maintained as a system of scent-mediated interactions between individual animals, researchers from the University of Bristol found. The precise nature of such changeable territorial boundaries is revealed in a new study, published on March 10 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology.

The study of the exclusion tactics adopted by urban foxes suggests that the transient nature of animal territory is a result of a complex system of individual-level interactions. The researchers used thirty years of data regarding the movements of the urban red fox to construct and verify a mathematical model on which their analysis was based. A trade-off between two factors emerged as key determinants of territoriality. The first is the average size of the animal's territory which determines the time it takes for the animal to move between its own boundaries, and the second is the time span during which animal scent marks remain active.

In 1994, when sarcoptic mange infected and killed most of Bristol's fox population, Professor Stephen Harris noticed that as the animals on one territory died, the neighbouring animals were able to move in and take over within a matter of three or four days. He assumed that this was because the scent marks of the original fox population were no longer fresh. The new study confirms how important it is for a fox to renew its scent marks frequently, disputing previously held beliefs that scent marks serve as long-term messages and indicators of territorial boundaries.

Lead author Dr Luca Giuggioli said: "Understanding how organisms move and interact has implications far beyond behavioural ecology. This model may, for instance, shed light on the processes responsible for the formation of territorial boundaries in early human hunter-gatherer societies."