An Arctic fox has amazed scientists by walking nearly 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometres) across the frozen wastes of the Arctic from the Svalbard archipelago of Norway to Canada.<\/p>\n
It was not just the distance that the diminutive fox trekked but the pace at which it traveled – completing the journey in just 76 days and walking as much as 96 miles (155 kilometres) in a single day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scientists were able to track the fox because it was fitted with a device attached to a ring around its neck.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The young female fox, which had not even reached its first birthday, set out from the island of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago of northern Norway in March last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Three weeks later it reached Greenland, before continuing on its epic odyssey across sea ice and tundra to Canada\u2019s Ellesmere Island, where it arrived in early July.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In what scientists described as \u201camong the longest dispersal events ever recorded for an Arctic fox,\u201d the animal crossed huge expanses of sea ice as well as glaciers, foraging for food as she went.<\/p>\n
Arctic fox's epic trek<\/aside>\n
It travelled an average distance of 28 miles (46 kilometres) a day but that spiked to 96 miles when it crossed the flat ice sheets of northern Greenland.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the fastest movement rate recorded for this species,\u201d scientists said in a paper published by Polar Research, the journal of the Norwegian Polar Institute.<\/p>\n
On its journey the fox would have had to make drastic changes to its diet – in northern Norway the species preys on seabirds, crustaceans, seaweed and carrion, whereas in Canada the foxes feed on lemmings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This particular fox had a grey-blue coat, enabling it to blend into the boulders and rocky shoreline of its original home in Svalbard.<\/p>\n