I'm pretty sure its just a mindless animal trying to survive. Its not golden, its not named, its not mythical. Its an ordinary skyrim fox.
Now the chickens? That's something there. The chickens are the key to something. Why else would there be so many nests and eggs? Why else would a whole town try to kill you for trying to make your own pheasant briast?

yea sometimes I tried following fox or goats, sometimes they led me in some interesting place like small altars or ruins, sometimes they just running in circles.

He is no Bear And also he never smiles


Noooooo


No thats my Kitty


Why that? He is an "Animal" too Also there is no head follows (thing) like in Oblivion where your character looked at everybody.

The fox lead me to a frost spider and a wolf. They were somewhat far away from me.
They walked together like bets buddies, haha.

I followed fox once, and she led me to a fox's hole. Than i came in and find 2 more foxes how they are playing poker, and the gray fox with them. One of them asked me: '' Wanna try''

You weren't playing Skyrim. You played Alice in Wonderland how it seems like

Some follow foxes some follow goats, i just look at the compass and find dungeons when iam getting closer.

Pretty much. The map is literally filled with explorable locations. It'd be much less likely for you to not run into a dungeon when you walk into any direction long enough. Following a fox, or not.

there's a lot of other interesting spots that are not displayed in the compass or the map

I kill everything that moves but doesnt talk. Seems like a solid rule of thumb

I always follow the fox. I never shoot them. Foxes have led me to a lot of places.

So after this thread, I started trying to pay a little more attention to the animals and made a rather interesting discovery.

I was walking from Labyrinthan (North Exit) to Winterhold, passing some Dwemer ruins where the terrain gets really broken- cliffs, crevasses etc. I spotted a goat and decided to see if it would "show" me the best path.
I followed it for a bit, and it seemed like it knew where it was going, but eventually, it went right and I saw a better way to descend on the left.
No big deal.
Same play session, I have to head back to Labyrinthan, do the quest, then hoof it back to the college.
At the same place by the Dwemer ruins, there's the goat heading East and I follow it and it veers right again right where I see the best path of descent.
It was walking the exact path as before, I am certain.

I believe that some (all?) wandering animals follow a path of checkpoints after they spawn rather than just wandering aimlessly.
It would make sense then that some foxes (or goats or deer) are scripted to walk to or past points of interest and perhaps some are not.

The fox follows me...Lydia looks so cool in her plate armour....

someones been waching jesse cox

I`ve been experimenting following foxes and I don`t think they are actually leading anywhere. like someone else said, they just follow certain paths that tend to lead near settlements etc.

Foxes are terrible at causing damage. I learned this after I practiced a Fury Spell on a fox. They have a funny bark and a lousy bite.

As I have a high Ilusion skill and have been filling in the Illusion Perk Tree, I am beginning to appreciate this skill more. Whenever I see an animal, a troll, or an anthropod, I practive a calming spell on them. This spell works very well, and I am killing less creatures now. (For those who have trouble with Frost Trolls, when you character has the Hypnotic Gaze perk, you can use the Calm Spel and it works great.)

You need to hear foxes in the middle of the night in reallife. They make some really creepy sounds.

i dont follow foxes, i follow bunnies. and when they lead me to a great treasure, i pick them up, rub their cute little heads, and say 'oh u little cuttie pie will u be my pet?'
Then i put it down, FUS ROH DAH, dinner.

Almost certainly you're correct. If Skyrim is like Oblivion then it has "pathfrids" to guide actors. http://www.iguanadons.net/files/PathGrids.jpg shows what a pathgrid looks like. The blue nodes represent the preferred path. Each node is a spot where an actor might choose to stop. If an actor's AI package tells it to travel from point A to point B the actor will try to get there busing one of these lines.

I came in here thinking this thread would be about the Grey Fox.

LOL you got trolled by a fox

Okay I followed a fox. Shortly after that, a courier ran up to me and handed me a restraining order...

Fur armor and ragdoll on fire.

All the animals in the game have to follow the world pathgrids. Would make sense that if they are running from anything that they will follow the pathgrid of least resistance. Those fox really are great about leading you around in the mountains when its a blinding snowstorm. It's not like they are going to run off a cliff.

Its possible it reached the end of its wander package and therefore was limited in how far it could go.