Kate’s a foxy lady
...but should she really encourage these wild urban scavengers by hand-feeding them?
SHE regularly entertains her five million Instagram followers with the antics of her cats.
Now Kate Beckinsale has found another four-legged friend with which to amuse them – one of London’s 10,000 urban foxes. But images of the actress feeding it by hand sparked a debate over whether it is right to befriend animals seen by many city dwellers as unwelcome scavengers.
Miss Beckinsale, 48, has posted videos of herself lying down as the fox takes pieces of shredded ham from her hands.
‘Have you come for your tea? Come on, let’s go,’ she said in one clip as she opened the door to the animal as it sat on the doorstep of her mother’s London home.
In another video, Miss Beckinsale sat cross-legged on the patio as she stroked the fox, which was eating from her hand before drinking iced water.
Other footage showed it jumping on her leg to retrieve some food. Most of her fans were smitten with the images. Singer Rita Ora commented: ‘Wow so cute.’
But one questioned whether she had read up on feeding foxes by hand, to which Miss Beckinsale retorted: ‘Well of course. I’m not a reckless irresponsible fool.’
However, Trevor Williams, founder of the Fox Project, told the Daily Mail: ‘Whilst foxes are intelligent and generally selective about who they befriend, we should always avoid undermining a fox’s natural caution and putting it in danger of people with less compassion.’
And the National Fox Welfare Society advises against hand feeding. Its website states: ‘Foxes naturally have a “flight distance”.
It needs to know it can get away safely. By encouraging a wild fox to eat out of your hands, you have taken away the flight distance, and this could lead to serious consequences, if it approaches someone else not so fox friendly.’