Most red foxes are — predictably, given the name of the breed — reddish in color, skewing orange.
But in Northbrook, an unusual variant of red fox has been slinking about: One with fur that’s almost all black, coloration wildlife experts say is quite rare and the result of a genetic quirk.
Believed to be a male of about 15 pounds, it’s been seen in a number of places in the northern suburb over the last year or two, according to the village’s animal control officer, Gina Manski.
“I just got a picture a couple days ago” of the animal, Manski said, courtesy of a police officer who snapped a shot and sent it her way.
“I get a ton of photos of him” from locals, she said. “Either they don’t know what it is, or it’s like, ‘Look at this cool fox!’”
She’s seen it in person just once, last year.
“He was limping on a back leg,” Manski said, though the creature was nonetheless able to hop a five-foot chain-link fence and dart away.
The limp is now gone, so the fox has apparently recovered from whatever injury it had.
Foxes like this are called “melanistic” because they have elevated levels of melanin that determines pigmentation, experts say.
Albinism “is basically the opposite of that,” said Seth Magle of Lincoln Park Zoo’s Urban Wildlife Institute.
The Northbrook creature is “mostly black with silver trim,” Manski said, adding there’s another red fox in town that is “red but has black shading on his back.”
The Will County Forest Preserve District says: “While most red foxes are the rusty red color we are so familiar with, not all are, and this often takes us by surprise. Some red foxes are the usual reddish-brown but with a black stripe down their backs and another across their shoulders, while others can be silvery or nearly black in color.”
“Silvery or black foxes are called silver foxes, and they are much more rare, occurring in only about 10% of red foxes,” according to the agency. Other estimates have them at less than 1%.
They’re not to be confused with gray foxes. That’s a different species, generally smaller than red foxes and much less abundant in Illinois, with the unusual characteristic of climbing trees.
Cook County Forest Preserve District wildlife biologist Chris Anchor said this about the genetic mutation that makes red foxes black: “We’ve seen it in red fox, we’ve seen it in gray fox, we’ve seen it in coyotes, we’ve seen it in deer” as well as gray squirrels.
A black-colored red fox kit was spotted in far southwest suburban Lockport in 2024, as Chicago Sun-Times outdoors columnist Dale Bowman noted at the time.
In 2025, another young black fox was spotted in Yellowstone National Park near the Old Faithful geyser, according to the Cowboy State Daily publication.
Northbrook has a population of about 35,000 people and a fair amount of open land, from golf courses and wooded patches to cemeteries. A branch of the Chicago River and railroad tracks serve as wildlife corridors.
But Manski says the red foxes in her community are often in residential areas.
Social media and news reports have conveyed red fox sightings in recent years in the Beverly, Humboldt Park, Norwood Park and Rogers Park neighborhoods of Chicago in addition to the Loop and the Medical District on the West Side. Suburbs including Bensenville, Elmhurst, Lockport, Park Ridge, Plainfield and St. Charles also played host to the creatures, according to online sources and interviews.
“Legendary for their cunning cleverness, red fox are equally at home in the trackless wilderness as they are in a tract-housing development,” according to the National Park Service.
But they’re not as ubiquitous as they might sometimes seem, Magle said, as his research shows their natural, larger canine competitor, coyotes, are flourishing much more in the city and inner-ring suburbs.
Unlike coyotes, which have adapted well to the urban and suburban landscape, foxes aren’t usually a threat to household pets such as cats and dogs. Rather, foxes are known to feast on rabbits and squirrels, and nuisance animals such as rats and mice.
“Red foxes prefer rodents and rabbits, but they will also eat birds, amphibians and fruit,” according to the National Wildlife Federation. “Red foxes will also steal food from garbage cans or farms. Their ability to find food, even during the winter, is one reason why red foxes have a reputation for being cunning and smart.”
Another culinary aspect, Anchor said, is they’ll “wipe out a whole litter of baby skunks and eat them.”
Magle said of red foxes and other wildlife: “We get a lot more benefits from living around these species than drawbacks and detriments.”
Such wild creatures help humans fulfill “an intrinsic need to connect with the natural world,” Magle said. “How cool it is to have the capacity to feel wonder, to feel awe” by their presence.
“It’s especially exciting when it’s something we don’t expect.”