The animal most famously known for being sneaky and sly is the fox, earning the idiom "sly as a fox" due to its cunning, cleverness, and stealthy hunting, often at night, using agility, speed, and keen senses. Other animals known for stealth and trickery include weasels, snakes, owls, cats, and even intelligent octopuses, but the fox embodies these traits in popular culture.
These Sneaky Animals Are Masters of Stealth and Survival
You have probably heard of the term, sly as a fox. Meaning they are smart, sneaky, cleaver and even a trickster. Odds are that term came about because of the red fox. Being a smaller member of the canid family, you can't rely on strength to survive.
Telling someone they are as sly as a fox is not always meant as a compliment, but in the animal kingdom a red fox's cunning and cleverness serve it well.
These Are the Most Shy Animals in the World
“Crazy like a fox” and “sly as a fox” are just a couple of the phrases associated with foxes. Humans view these animals as clever, determined, intelligent, and mischievous.
The fork-tailed drongo is a master of vocal deception. This clever bird imitates the alarm calls of many other species to trick them into abandoning their food. When nearby animals find something to eat, the drongo emits a false warning call that makes them believe a predator is approaching.
Get to know some of nature's most elusive creatures.
A "silent killer" animal can refer to predators with stealthy hunting methods, like the owl, leopard, or python, but also to venomous or disease-carrying creatures such as the venomous, yet cute, slow loris, the camouflaged stonefish, the fast-acting common krait snake, or even the microscopic mosquito, which transmits deadly diseases like malaria and West Nile virus, making it the world's deadliest "silent killer" overall.
Foxes have a reputation for being cunning animals and in an old folklore they described as tricksters. You still hear that today when someone describes a fox and what we associate it with.
Foxes are, in most stories, cunning and wily rogues, whose exploits range from outsmarting its larger, stronger rivals (wolves and bears) to shapeshifting into human form. In Western myths, the fox is quite reliably a trickster whose strength lies in its mind rather than its physical might.
Birds pretend to be trees, big cats use mottled coats to melt into their surrounds, and some caterpillars even smell like sticks to throw off any would-be predators. These are examples of crypsis – the ability of creatures to avoid detection by either predator or prey. Here are eight of our favourite deception experts.
Our top five countdown of nature's most cunning con artists.
Cats are one of the most disloyal animals anyone can use as a pet.
The tanuki is often misidentified as a raccoon or a badger, but is in fact actually a type of dog that looks like a racoon (hence, it is often called a raccoon-dog in English). Because it was so difficult to even explain what a tanuki really was, the tanuki became associated with legends of trickery and deception.
The Secret Seven – Africa's Elusive Safari Animals
Leopards are masters of stealth and strength, silently stalking prey until the perfect moment to strike. With powerful jaws and muscular bodies, they can take down animals larger than themselves—and drag their catch up trees to keep it safe from scavengers.
The 21 Weirdest Animals in the World
Foxes have a reputation of being cunning, or sly. Now scientists think they have an uncanny ability to use Earth's magnetic field to hunt their prey.
Manipulator is an extinct cockroach genus including species which lived from the Late Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous.
The fox is known for its clever and cunning wit. It can outsmart any animal in the forest, even the lion.
The slow loris is a small, slow moving, nocturnal primate with large, expressive eyes. They are only one of two mammals that possess a toxic venom for defense (the platypus being the other). This cute animal is considered foolish because of its silly-looking defense mechanism. It merely lifts its arms when threatened.