Arctic fox who is best friends with a dog

The video of an unusually tame Arctic fox featured on Iceland Monitor last week, is in fact a tame fox, revealed Jón Matthías Sigurðsson, a fox hunter who lives on a nearby farm.

 Two men who visited Ion Hotel in Nesjavellir, south Iceland, captured the video of a fox last week. They found the animal remarkably tame but now there's a logical explanation.

Sigurðsson found the fox this spring while it was a cub and took it home. Freyja the fox cub is best friends with the dog on the farm. "She's dependent on humans, she looks at them as friends because we feed her," says Sigurðsson who has been a fox hunter for 29 years. Freyja is not the first fox cub he's adopted but he says she's the tamest one. He kills foxes for the nearby farmers, and this summer, he's shot and killed around one hundred of them. "I've often had fox cubs  at my home before. Usually at this time of year they've become so dependent on men that they get hit by cars. Theyr'e not particularly intelligent that way. Many people have also mistaken them for wild foxes and have shot them." 

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Sigurðsson explains that certain numbers of foxes have to be killed each year because if they are left alone they wreak havoc for birds and animals. "They have no enemies in nature except man. But it's a beautiful animal and you have to respect them." He thinks he will have to put down Freyja the fox soon although sometimes he's taken them to the Slakki family zoo. "This fox is particularly friendly. Most foxes can get quite vicious but we can pick up this one, and she plays with the dog all the time."