Arctic Foxes

Arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus) are typically brownish gray in the summer and frosty white in the winter. Weirdly, coastal populations in Alaska and Canada are slate gray and lighten only slightly during the winter. Some of these were introduced to the Aleutian Islands by fur trappers, who could charge more money for their unusually colored coats. Among the main predators of the Arctic fox is its cousin the red fox (V. vulpes). Though the overlap in range was historically rather thin, climate change has allowed the red fox to move farther into the Arctic fox’s icy domain, outcompeting it for food and sometimes eating it.