Zootropolis fans in China flock to buy rare £2,000 fennec foxes

Chinese fans of Disney animated smash hit Zootropolis are flocking to buy rare fennec foxes, despite the miniature African species being unsuitable as pets, reports the LA Times.

Zootropolis, titled Zootopia in the US, is the story of a city populated by talking animals. One of the central characters is a wily con-artist red fox, whose sidekick Finnick is a fennec. The species, which is native to the Sahara, is known for its nocturnal habits and unusually large ears.

The Times reports the animals, which are appealing to city dwellers as a smaller alternative to the more populous red fox, are available to buy in China for about $3,000 (£2,100), despite being prohibited from public sale. A rush of interest followed Zootopia’s March debut in Chinese cinemas. The film is now the highest-grossing animation of all time in the world’s most populous nation, with receipts of $231m.

“We normally sell them to zoos, but have received quite a few phone calls after the screening of Zootopia,” an employee of a wild animal import-export company in Liaoning province told the Times. “One family from Jiangsu province bought a fennec fox from us not long ago. Then I received three other parents’ calls, demanding the foxes.”

Other fennec purchasers, however, told the Times they had already decided to try to sell the animals on, after discovering they do not make great pets. The foxes are unsociable, cannot be house-trained and make a lot of noise at night.

Fennec foxes are not endangered, but experts believe any increase in Chinese imports could lead to populations of the rare animals struggling in the wild.

“If trading fennec foxes becomes widely practised in China, the illegal trade of fennec foxes from their native region will certainly increase,” Zhang Jinshuo, an associate professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Zoology, told the Times. “That will reduce the number of wild fennec foxes and ultimately could lead to the extinction of the species.”

In other film news, Chinese fans of the controversial Hong Kong film Ten Years have been stymied in their efforts to download the film from the internet after it was banned on the mainland, according to the South China Morning Post. Curious filmgoers trying to find the movie on illegal free websites have instead found themselves watching a 2011 Channing Tatum romcom, also titled Ten Years, which features no dystopian visions of a future Hong Kong under communist rule.

Meanwhile, the action sequel London Has Fallen unexpectedly opened on top at the Chinese box office this weekend, after struggling to find audiences elsewhere. Starring Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart, the poorly-reviewed, UK-set follow-up to 2013’s Olympus Has Fallen made $24m in its first three days. It now boasts $128m worldwide, more than twice the film’s shooting budget, though further sequels would still appear unlikely.