I was traveling along an un-marked path in the rift. It was about an hour past dawn, the sunlight was shining as beams through the trees and glinting from the eyes of my soon to retire legate of the Imperial Legion.

I spotted a rabbit running slowly along the path. I decided to follow it on it's path, jogging behind it watching it intently whilst the gentle cool breeze of the deep valley blew through my greying brown hair.

I turned a corner on the hillside and suddenly I heard a pounce and out of no-where two great paws of a sabrecat crushed the rabbit into the dirt causing me to jump frantically out of its path tumbling down into the valley in my clunking legion armour earning myself an "Early Retirement."

Das was nicht gut...

When I see foxes I return back to my house at whirerun to put the wheelie bins & recycling box back indoors.

I would love to see a mod where foxes enter cities and then spread the dreaded Rabies!

You can't go 100 meters without running into a dungeon. Foxes and goats have nothing to do with it.

Funny, in my game foxes do no such thing. They either run in erratic zig-zags to nowhere in particular, run up and down a path, stay still, or just run away from my character. If you get in front of them they'll turn around and run the opposite direction. It may seem like they're leading you somewhere, but they're just running away from your character. Skyrim is so packed with stuff you're bound to run into something when chasing them.

Leads me to dinner.

Hah, I'm glad I'm not the only one who though I'd noticed some odd, foxy behavior!
At first it seemed just flukey, but after a while I noticed that they consistently seemed to wait for me to get within visual range before taking off and always ended up leading me somewhere, whether it be down a certain path, to a cave or other location, or along a shortcut bypassing some other route. It's too consistent and deliberate to be a fluke so I suspect it's some ingrained behavior in the foxes' AI.
Very clever, really (just as a fox should be), and it's made them my favorite animals in the game...so much so that I've found myself defending them from harm on several occasions just to see where they might be off to.

That's a cool idea. I will have to follow a random mammal next time I am on.........

I saw two wolves pursuing a fox, but it escaped from them. Also, when i'm sneaking arround in the wilderness I always hear steps approaching to me, I think "OMG someone will detect and kill me!" then hear some gasps near and when turn around is a fox running ??.

Two days ago y saw 2 sabre cats camping M'Aiq, but because he's essential, he can't die. It' would be an eternal torture like Prometheus, so I killed the sabre cats with my bow to help him.

I've seen that lots of times.

I followed a moose most of the way up the 7,000 steps to the Throat of the World, then it veered to the left and I kept going.

I just can't get over how much your character's face resembles the pedobear smile

Usually it seems the fox follows me. Rabbits run away, and deer just stand in the middle of the road and have a delayed run away response.

Holy [censored], it really does!

My girlfriend's long lost kitty? Is that you?

Yep.

that is amazing immersion you honor me friend

I haven't tried following a fox yet however I once followed a rabbit and fell into a hole.

I find that smirk on your character's face as it eyes the rear end of the fox unsettling...

On the way to High Hrothgar for the first time, I followed a goat up the steps when suddenly it stopped half-way up. I was confused as to why it stopped because it was walking the whole time up the mountain, and then I look up at a ridge and see the infamous frost troll standing there. If it hadn't been for that goat, I would've been caught by surprise by that nasty creature, I managed to sneak past it. I think the animals in Skyrim should be paid more attention to, because they can save your life. They are definatley telling us something.

There's this great Let's Play series on youtube by OMFGCata (hope I'm not advertising), where the guy had decided to follow a fox he had nicknamed Foxy Brown to see where it would lead him. The results were often hilarious (usually as a by-product of his commentaries)

By far the most frequent animal vs animal event I see is a bear chasing down one or two deer. So I begin hunting down the bear. The bears in this game are really arrogant and always catch me off guard, so I take 'em out whenever I get the chance

Usually when I come across a fox I run right up to it. It stands there staring at me for a few seconds then takes off. Never followed one though.

As for wolves, I did come across a wolf in a cage in the middle of nowhere. I opened the cage door to set him free and he just sauntered off without even attacking me. It seems I made a new friend

From afar, I watched a conjurer kill a rabbit near a pack of non-hostile wolves, only to see them turn on the conjurer. That's natural justice for you!

Not that I want to steer the topic off topic but ...

There's actually been zero cases reported of a wolf attacking a human IRL, that was not provoked beforehand (i.e. encouraged to attack, or was being hunted).

They are fierce hunters, but with how their hunting patterns work, they don't even bother attacking/hunting anything that they deem as being healthy/strong. This is because they have to conserve energy for when they really need it, and they are much less likely to be successful on a hunt if they go for the biggest/strongest thing versus simply hunting the sick or old. And they only hunt for food - because it is a waste of energy to do otherwise. In other words, they never attack humans because they don't eat human meat, and because humans are generally strong. There have actually been documented studies done on wolves where scientists who have been in long-term proximity with certain family packs, ended up being so trusted by the wolf packs that one of the scientists was able to actually enter a den and see the pups without the mother attacking

But as such, wolves tend to have a positive effect on the hunted wildlife in the area they hunt in, because if a herd has members in it that are old or sick, it prevents the herd from being strong and gives them a more likely chance to not survive a winter or become ill with a contagious disease. Since wolves generally only attack the sick/old, it keeps the herds healthy Wolves also have been known to have smaller litters in years where food is not as plenty (for instance due to overpopulation), which tends to keep them in check too.


Okay enough eco-blabber

I tend to find a lot of foxes under the water so they don't really lead me anywhere

They usually show me a dead fox.