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Record-breaking arctic fox walks more than a marathon a day to reach Canada

Researchers say the fox travelled from northern Norway to Canada’s far north in 76 days.
Researchers say the fox travelled from northern Norway to Canada’s far north in 76 days.

Norwegian researchers say an arctic fox has walked from northern Norway to Canada’s far north, a distance of 4,415 kilometres (2,737 miles), in 76 days.

The Norwegian Polar Institute says the young female fox left Norway’s Svalbard archipelago on March 1 2018 and reached Canada’s Ellesmere Island by way of Greenland on July 1 2018.

The institute says the trek is among the longest recorded for an arctic fox.

The institute said in a research article it was able to monitor the small fox’s movements across extensive stretches of sea ice and glaciers with a tracking device put on the animal in July 2017.

The state-run agency says the roughly two-year-old female moved at an average rate of 46.3 kilometres per day (28.7 miles per day).