. . . . "David Macdonald, in a 1977 paper to Mammal Review, concluded that insectivores such as shrews and moles were only eaten when other, more preferable, foods were scarce.???In most cases, moles and shrews are probably unintentional victims of the fox???s hunting method (see below), which essentially means the fox doesn???t know what it is hunting until it has caught it." .