COPENHAGEN: Norwegian researchers say an arctic fox walked from northern Norway to Canada’s far north, a distance of 4,415 kilometres in four months.

The Norwegian Polar Institute says the young female fox left her birthplace on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago on March 1, 2018 and reached Canada’s Ellesmere Island by way of Greenland on July 1, 2018.

The institute says the ground the small animal covered was among the most ever recorded for an Arctic fox seeking a breeding site. The institute said in a research article the fox’s movements were monitored across glaciers and extensive stretches of sea ice with a satellite tracking collar it put on the animal in July 2017.

The state-run agency says the roughly 2-year-old fox moved at an average rate of 46.3 kilometres per day.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd , 2019