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I'm Fumiko Satou, a caretaker at the Zao Fox Village in Shiroishi City, Miyagi Prefecture.
Pleased to meet you. Shoo, shoo!
I went to this fox village in Hokkaido, and saw foxes running out in the open. I thought it was great.
They said they were going to open another fox village, so I asked them to hire me. That's how I got started.
Foxes' favorite food are rats.
Ezo red foxes are found in Hokkaido, but there's a reason they came to be there.
They're originally from up north on Kunashir Island.
They were introduced to Hokkaido by humans in order to combat a huge explosion in the rat population there.
The foxes also unfortunately brought over the disease echinococcosis with them.
Foxes are extremely curious about everything, but they're also easily frightened.
When they get hurt, we need to bring them in for treatment, but they're impossible to catch.
Foxes spend a lot of time digging holes.
They dig holes and bury all their food at least once.
This is because fox kits are taught by their mothers to store food for lean times.
They learn that if they eat everything today, they'll be hungry tomorrow. So they make food caches.
The mothers teach their kits by repeatedly burying food in the holes, and digging it up.
That's how the young foxes learn to never eat all of their food at once.
But the foxes here get fed every day, so they've stopped doing that for the most part.
But, they still bury things out of instinct.
Things that visitors drop, for example.
They're digging and burying most of the time.
Foxes are nocturnal. They spend most of the day sleeping.
That's actually true for most wild animals, not just foxes.
If they're active in the daytime they could run into predators or people.
Their instincts tell them that it's safer at night.
The foxes run around fighting and making a lot of noise at night.
Their yapping at night is really loud.
They sleep until around 9 pm.
They go to sleep at around 4 am.
In human years, this fox is 40 years old.
The crowds during vacation season were especially intense, so it lost a lot of weight.
This one has strong maternal instincts as it's raising kits at the moment.
The foxes will steal anything. They'll think it's edible and try to bury it.
They're not the smartest critters. But dogs bury things like shoes too, don't they!
The foxes love shoes because they can really sink their teeth into them and get a good grip.
They love shoes the best.
See how timid they are? That's all it takes to scare them.
Ouch!