Survey reveals that positive interactions with red foxes improve nature connectedness in urban populations, suggesting implications for public health.
Frequent and positive wildlife experiences can strengthen people's physical and mental connection with nature, potentially improving public health and pro-environmental behaviors. Red foxes are the most widespread terrestrial carnivore on the planet and may, therefore, be an important gateway for people to connect with nature. However, it remains unclear how interactions with foxes might influence (positively or negatively) nature connectedness and health in people, such as general anxiety. We surveyed 230 people using an online questionnaire. Frequent, positive experiences were related to better attitudes and tolerance toward foxes, as well as broader nature connectedness. Nature connectedness was negatively related to urbanization but unrelated to age or education. General anxiety was inversely related to age, but unrelated to urbanization, education, frequency and quality of fox experiences, or the interaction between urbanization and fox experiences. These findings suggest a potential role of foxes in shaping people's broader nature connectedness, particularly in cities.
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Morton et al. (2025) studied this question.
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