Answer: Red Fox

If you survey the oral traditions and tales of cultures around the world, you’ll find a remarkable number of them include stories about the humble red fox. While part of that may well be that the red fox is a striking figure and a particularly clever animal that earned inclusion in tales big and small, there is another practical reason too.

The red fox is, well, practically everywhere. It has the largest geographic range of any member of the Carnivora order—which includes over 280 species like bears, cats, weasels, dogs, and hyenas. The red fox appears all across the Northern Hemisphere from the bitter reaches of the Arctic Circle all the way down to Northern Africa, including Eurasia, North America, and Central America. Though it’s a non-native invasive species, you’ll even find red foxes in Australia too.