Arctic foxes eat very few plants. They are omnivores, but their diet is overwhelmingly animal-based, built around lemmings, voles, seabirds, and scavenged carcasses. When they do eat plant material, it’s almost always berries picked during the brief Arctic summer, and even then, vegetation makes up only about 2% of their overall diet.
Berries Are the Main Plant Food
The plants most commonly linked to Arctic fox diets are berry-producing shrubs that grow low to the ground across the tundra. These include crowberries (small black berries common throughout the Arctic), blueberries, bog cranberries, and lowbush cranberries. All four of these species fruit during the short summer window when the tundra briefly thaws, and foxes will eat them opportunistically when they come across them while hunting or traveling.
In Iceland, where lemmings don’t exist and foxes need to patch together a more varied diet, crowberries appear more regularly as a food source. Icelandic Arctic foxes also eat seaweed, which is unusual for the species elsewhere. This suggests that foxes turn to plant foods more readily when their preferred prey is scarce or absent, not because they seek out vegetation as a dietary staple.
Why Plants Are a Tiny Part of the Diet
A study analyzing Arctic fox scat on Svalbard found that vegetation appeared in most droppings but only in very small amounts, contributing roughly 2% of the diet by weight. The researchers concluded that most of this plant material was likely swallowed by accident, picked up while the foxes were eating prey on the ground. No plant species on Svalbard appeared to have real nutritional importance for the foxes.
A separate analysis of fox stomach contents in western Alaska classified vegetation alongside fox hair, wood, and soil as “nonfood items.” In dietary models for that region, Arctic foxes were categorized as eating 100% small mammals. So while traces of plants regularly show up in fox digestive tracts, much of it may come from incidental ingestion or from the stomachs of the rodents they eat, rather than deliberate foraging.
Season Matters More Than Preference
Arctic foxes live in one of the most food-scarce environments on Earth, and what they eat shifts dramatically with the seasons. In summer, they hunt nesting seabirds, steal eggs, and chase lemmings and voles across the tundra. This is also the only window when berries are available, so any intentional plant eating happens during these few months.
In winter, the tundra is frozen and buried under snow. No berries or green vegetation are accessible. Foxes survive on cached food, scavenged reindeer and seal carcasses, and ptarmigan. Their winter diet is essentially all protein and fat from animal sources, with nothing from plants. Research on Svalbard foxes described their year-round diet as “consisting mainly of protein and fat of animal origin and nothing or very little from vegetable sources.”
How Location Shapes Plant Eating
Geography plays a significant role in how much plant material ends up in an Arctic fox’s diet. In regions with healthy lemming populations, like northern Alaska and parts of Canada and Scandinavia, foxes rely heavily on rodents and rarely bother with plants. On Svalbard, where reindeer carcasses and seabird colonies provide abundant food, vegetation is negligible.
Iceland is the outlier. Without lemmings, Icelandic foxes eat a far more varied diet that includes invertebrates, a wide range of bird species, marine mammals washed ashore, and notably more plant material like crowberries and seaweed. This flexibility is a survival strategy rather than a preference. Arctic foxes are generalist feeders that will eat nearly anything available, and plants become worth eating only when higher-calorie animal food is hard to find.
Plants Arctic Foxes Are Known to Eat
- Crowberries: Small, dark berries found across Arctic and subarctic tundra. The most commonly documented plant food for Arctic foxes, especially in Iceland.
- Blueberries: Wild tundra blueberries that fruit in late summer.
- Bog cranberries: Tiny, tart berries growing in wet tundra areas.
- Lowbush cranberries (lingonberries): Low-growing berries found in drier tundra habitat.
- Seaweed: Documented in coastal Iceland populations, likely eaten when washed ashore.
- Grasses and sedges: Found in scat and stomach contents, but generally considered incidental rather than intentional food.
The bottom line is that Arctic foxes can and do eat plants, but they’re meat-eaters first. Berries are a seasonal snack, seaweed is a regional oddity, and most other plant material in their system probably got there by accident. In a landscape where calories are precious and winters are long, animal prey is what keeps Arctic foxes alive.