f folian@on200.com Shared in Today I Learned@lemmy.world 7 days ago TIL a 1994 mange outbreak collapsed Bristol's unusually social urban fox population, breaking their dense groups back into solitary animals Bristol is one of the best-studied urban fox cities: researchers have followed the same population since 1981 (Harris counted 211 family groups across 116 km²). The foxes had formed unusually dense, social groups for a city. Then in 1994 sarcoptic mange swept through and numbers crashed, and the social structure broke down into ordinary solitary animals — a disease undoing in one season what the city’s food and gardens had built.