Meeting Tobbie: Beastly Stories About Urban Red Foxes – A Case of Infanticide

Abstract This article examines a unique case of infanticide in red foxes ( Vulpes vulpes ) committed by Tobbie, a male fox living in an urban area, using elements rarely invoked in the scientific literature: the “beastly stories.” The data collected to trace foxes’ experiences are based on night observations and video recordings from trail cameras. As qualitative methods are rarely used to study nonhuman animals, this article aims to show how tools from the social sciences can produce knowledge about red foxes. The inclusion of nonhuman animals in the social sciences makes it possible to shed light on events that, as in Tobbie’s case, cannot be explained by generic hypotheses. On the contrary, an intimate knowledge of nonhuman animal sociality brings to light conflicts, tensions, and negotiations that might have led Tobbie to commit infanticide within his own social group.