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The Natural History of Weasels and Stoats: Ecology, Behavior, and Management
Field naturalists have observed the activities of weasels for centuries. Their descriptions were often accurate but sometimes misinterpreted the animals' behaviors and underlying explanations for those behaviors. "Organized natural history" became one of the roots of the science of ecology in the 1920s and by the 1960s scientists had begun to study the biology of weasels with all the critical, objective advantages of modern theory and equipment. Until the first edition of this book appeared in 1989 no one had attempted to explain these results to non-specialist naturalists. Now thoroughly revised, this book will continue to be the main one-stop reference for professionals. But both kinds of knowledge are brought together here-- observations for the traditional naturalist and rigorous measurements and interpretations for modern scientists, integrated into a single, readable account.
This new edition provides a comprehensive summary of the extensive advances over the last 15 years in our knowledge of these fascinating animals. A new U.S.-based co-author reshapes the content to be more U.S.-centric. Stories about North America trappers and backwoodsmen interacting with weasels replace some (not all) of the previous stories about English gamekeepers. These changes permeate the book, so readers familiar with the first edition will recognize some material, but will find a lot that is new. Much less reliable European information quoted in the first edition was there at the time when no better information was available. Now a new NZ chapter focuses on predation problems of the species introduced to that country. This edition, much more than a simple update, is now truly an international treatment and a more valuable resource.
This new edition provides a comprehensive summary of the extensive advances over the last 15 years in our knowledge of these fascinating animals. A new U.S.-based co-author reshapes the content to be more U.S.-centric. Stories about North America trappers and backwoodsmen interacting with weasels replace some (not all) of the previous stories about English gamekeepers. These changes permeate the book, so readers familiar with the first edition will recognize some material, but will find a lot that is new. Much less reliable European information quoted in the first edition was there at the time when no better information was available. Now a new NZ chapter focuses on predation problems of the species introduced to that country. This edition, much more than a simple update, is now truly an international treatment and a more valuable resource.
- GenresNonfictionScience
464 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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December 18, 2021
An amazing book on weasels. Although it goes into great detail on many of the topics, it brings out the unique nature of these animals. The book looks at the smaller weasels in detail, but does not cover the larger weasels such as the mink, marten and wolverine. Originally written in the U.K., the second edition has more of a focus on North America.
The weasels are the Least (Mustela nivalis), Short-tail / Stoat / Ermine (M. erminea) and Long-tail (M. frenata). In Britain, M. nivalis differs from the North American animal - it does not turn white in the winter, for example - and is dealt with in the book as a separate subspecies termed the Common Weasel.
The authors introduce the weasels in a chapter titled "Hair-Trigger Mouse Traps with Teeth", looking at the features that make them "... a design for an effective mouse-harvesting machine that humans can only envy." Mustela means a “mus” (mouse) as long as a “telum” (spear). They have been described as "the Nemesis of Nature’s little people."
The weasel's ability to survive under snow is the key to their success. They are adapted to life in tunnels: short legs allow a normal gait while a long neck allows dragging prey without tripping. Their skeleton is narrower than their head, so anywhere the head can go, the body can follow. They chew bones at corners of their mouths like dogs as that is where the carnassial teeth are located.
Weasels are able to hear the ultrasonic calls of rodents; sound appears to be their main method of sending prey. They have a good sense smell. Their eyes have cones and rods, suggesting color vision. The tapetium behind the eyes glows green at night. The eye slits are horizontal, unlike the cat where they are vertical. A variety of sounds are made: hissing if uneasy, a bark or chip to threaten, a screech if cornered, a high pitched trill when happy, and a "zheeping" call if interested.
They have a very high metabolism. The heart of the Least Weasel "... purrs along at 500 bpm." Food passed in 2-4 hours. With their small thin bodies which carry little fat, much of the food energy must go into heat. They appear to store food energy as muscle rather than fat.
The molt is controlled by daylength, although colder temperatures may accelerate the shedding of old hair. The pituitary gland senses day length and also stimulates the reproductive system at the time of the spring molt. Weasels in the south and on the Pacific coast don't turn white. Surprisingly this appears to be less because of climate than evolutionary history
The small size of weasels suits them for entering rodent tunnels, the stoat being sized for vole tunnels. Larger prey are problematic as a rabbit can kill a weasel, the increased danger being offset by being able to spend more time in the den. Weasels kill was a characteristic bite to the neck which usually results in instantaneous death. Killing is instinctive. If multiple prey are around it will try to kill them and cache them. A weasel in a chicken coop is unable to ignore the fluttering birds and feed on a single hen. When prey are common weasels will create large food caches - dens in haystacks have been found with 50 dead mice Caches are important in the winter when they may not make enough kills in the day. Weasels avoid shrews - although bad taste has been suggested as a reason, it is not clear. While some studies have suggested weasels prefer to be active at night, their movements are more likely governed by their recent hunting success. Danger from raptors, owls and larger predators is also a factor.
The widespread conviction that predation must control prey populations is an old one, common among scientists as well as the general public. Despite appearances, few predators are efficient prey-harvesting machines - not even weasels. Most potential prey animals are not killed by weasels. Far more die for other reasons. In years when rodents are abundant, weasels reproduce well but cannot outbreed the rodents. In the subsequent decline of rodents, weasels starve, giving the rodents room to rebound. While it is generally thought that rodent numbers are not controlled by predation, there is evidence that in the north and boreal forests weasel predation reduces the rodent population significantly in the lean years. The question of whether predators limit prey or vice versa is a simple question to which there is no simple answer.
Typical home territory size for weasels is 4 - 40 hectares, but this varies widely depending on the nature of the cover and on prey density. Males have territories twice the size as the female territories.
Weasels have scent glands that may hold as much as 100 ml in a large male. The musk is quite unpleasant and if released all at once, causes a "stink bomb" that is familiar to trappers. The anatomy of the scent glands gets progressively more complex in a series from Meles (badgers) through Lutra (otters) and Martes (martens) to Mustela, which seems to be the most advanced of all, apart from the skunks. Scats are placed at strategic locations in the home range. Body rubbing is used as a threat signal, especially by a dominant of either sex during an aggressive encounter with a subordinate. A subordinate will react with obvious fear. They also have scent glands in their skin and mark by pressing their bellies against the ground.
A weasel marks its home territory, and the marks are regularly renewed. When a weasel notes that his neighbour is not renewing scent marks, he knows that something is amiss and the neighbour could well be out of the way. Weasels follow the same rules of home territory maintenance as other animals:
(1) chase your neighbour out of your territory when he invades (but don’t chase fast enough to catch him)
(2) run from your neighbour when he finds you on his territory (do not fight on his ground if you can help it)
(3) scent mark on top of his marks
(4) when conditions change and no territory has enough prey to support a single weasel, move out
The male weasel takes the female by the neck in mating. The bite is apparently locked so that it will not damage the female, who remains limp and passive while being carried. Mating lasts 15 minutes to several hours. Females are not loyal to a single male and as the sperm is long-lasting, a litter can include offspring of more than one father. As soon as the female's short period of heat is over she rejects all males with squeals and savage bites. No pair bonding occurs as adult weasels have little to do with each other after mating.
Short and long-tailed weasels generally produce a single litter in the spring. Gestation is 34 -37 days. In poor prey years, no young may survive. In good prey years, the least weasel can breed all year round, even mating again before the current litter is grown. For short and long-tailed weasels the spring molt is an accurate herald of the reproductive season. Litter size is 5 to 7. Weasels do not make their own nests, but commandeer those of rodents and even rabbits. Strangely, short-tailed weasel males impregnate the young before they open their eyes, with the young giving birth the following year. The litters disperse when the young reach 3 - 4 months of age - the females staying close to the nest, but the males travelling long distances to find new territories.
Common and least weasels breed all year and so can adjust their breeding efforts to increased prey volumes almost immediately. In stoats, the combination of delayed implantation and juvenile precocity allows simultaneous mating of adult and young females, which in turn means enormous potential breeding success for dominant males and certain fertilization before dispersal for the young females.
While short-tailed weasels can live to 7 years, any population is made up predominately of first year animals - typically 50 percent. In years of high prey density, the weasel population increases and the number of second year weasels approaches that of first year animals. Weasels are killed by of foxes, coyotes, feral cats, minks and ferrets, plus owls and hawks. Some predators, notably foxes, will kill but not eat them. Research has shown that the black tail tip on stoats and longtails is a classic predator-deflection mark, and that least weasels do not have it because their tails are too short to hold the mark far enough away from their body.
The influential American ecologist Paul Errington believed that the population density of most animals is set by the extent of their preferred habitat. Errington was convinced that predation is more often compensatory (substituting for other causes of mortality) than additive (adding to other causes). Most studies have found little increase in prey with the removal of weasels. The populations of weasels are almost entirely controlled by the density of prey.
Common weasels and stoats were imported into New Zealand for 20 years starting in 1884, to control rabbits on the sheep farms. The Common weasels are now scarce because of the lack of small prey such as mice. Most of New Zealand's loss of birds and other wildlife occurred before this date, with the arrival of the Maori in the 1300's and Europeans in the late 1700's accompanied by rats, cats and dogs. While rats are the primary predator of native animals, stoats kill many yellowheads, kaka, and robins in thee beech forests, and kiwi anywhere.
The weasels are the Least (Mustela nivalis), Short-tail / Stoat / Ermine (M. erminea) and Long-tail (M. frenata). In Britain, M. nivalis differs from the North American animal - it does not turn white in the winter, for example - and is dealt with in the book as a separate subspecies termed the Common Weasel.
The authors introduce the weasels in a chapter titled "Hair-Trigger Mouse Traps with Teeth", looking at the features that make them "... a design for an effective mouse-harvesting machine that humans can only envy." Mustela means a “mus” (mouse) as long as a “telum” (spear). They have been described as "the Nemesis of Nature’s little people."
The weasel's ability to survive under snow is the key to their success. They are adapted to life in tunnels: short legs allow a normal gait while a long neck allows dragging prey without tripping. Their skeleton is narrower than their head, so anywhere the head can go, the body can follow. They chew bones at corners of their mouths like dogs as that is where the carnassial teeth are located.
Weasels are able to hear the ultrasonic calls of rodents; sound appears to be their main method of sending prey. They have a good sense smell. Their eyes have cones and rods, suggesting color vision. The tapetium behind the eyes glows green at night. The eye slits are horizontal, unlike the cat where they are vertical. A variety of sounds are made: hissing if uneasy, a bark or chip to threaten, a screech if cornered, a high pitched trill when happy, and a "zheeping" call if interested.
They have a very high metabolism. The heart of the Least Weasel "... purrs along at 500 bpm." Food passed in 2-4 hours. With their small thin bodies which carry little fat, much of the food energy must go into heat. They appear to store food energy as muscle rather than fat.
The molt is controlled by daylength, although colder temperatures may accelerate the shedding of old hair. The pituitary gland senses day length and also stimulates the reproductive system at the time of the spring molt. Weasels in the south and on the Pacific coast don't turn white. Surprisingly this appears to be less because of climate than evolutionary history
The small size of weasels suits them for entering rodent tunnels, the stoat being sized for vole tunnels. Larger prey are problematic as a rabbit can kill a weasel, the increased danger being offset by being able to spend more time in the den. Weasels kill was a characteristic bite to the neck which usually results in instantaneous death. Killing is instinctive. If multiple prey are around it will try to kill them and cache them. A weasel in a chicken coop is unable to ignore the fluttering birds and feed on a single hen. When prey are common weasels will create large food caches - dens in haystacks have been found with 50 dead mice Caches are important in the winter when they may not make enough kills in the day. Weasels avoid shrews - although bad taste has been suggested as a reason, it is not clear. While some studies have suggested weasels prefer to be active at night, their movements are more likely governed by their recent hunting success. Danger from raptors, owls and larger predators is also a factor.
The widespread conviction that predation must control prey populations is an old one, common among scientists as well as the general public. Despite appearances, few predators are efficient prey-harvesting machines - not even weasels. Most potential prey animals are not killed by weasels. Far more die for other reasons. In years when rodents are abundant, weasels reproduce well but cannot outbreed the rodents. In the subsequent decline of rodents, weasels starve, giving the rodents room to rebound. While it is generally thought that rodent numbers are not controlled by predation, there is evidence that in the north and boreal forests weasel predation reduces the rodent population significantly in the lean years. The question of whether predators limit prey or vice versa is a simple question to which there is no simple answer.
Typical home territory size for weasels is 4 - 40 hectares, but this varies widely depending on the nature of the cover and on prey density. Males have territories twice the size as the female territories.
Weasels have scent glands that may hold as much as 100 ml in a large male. The musk is quite unpleasant and if released all at once, causes a "stink bomb" that is familiar to trappers. The anatomy of the scent glands gets progressively more complex in a series from Meles (badgers) through Lutra (otters) and Martes (martens) to Mustela, which seems to be the most advanced of all, apart from the skunks. Scats are placed at strategic locations in the home range. Body rubbing is used as a threat signal, especially by a dominant of either sex during an aggressive encounter with a subordinate. A subordinate will react with obvious fear. They also have scent glands in their skin and mark by pressing their bellies against the ground.
A weasel marks its home territory, and the marks are regularly renewed. When a weasel notes that his neighbour is not renewing scent marks, he knows that something is amiss and the neighbour could well be out of the way. Weasels follow the same rules of home territory maintenance as other animals:
(1) chase your neighbour out of your territory when he invades (but don’t chase fast enough to catch him)
(2) run from your neighbour when he finds you on his territory (do not fight on his ground if you can help it)
(3) scent mark on top of his marks
(4) when conditions change and no territory has enough prey to support a single weasel, move out
The male weasel takes the female by the neck in mating. The bite is apparently locked so that it will not damage the female, who remains limp and passive while being carried. Mating lasts 15 minutes to several hours. Females are not loyal to a single male and as the sperm is long-lasting, a litter can include offspring of more than one father. As soon as the female's short period of heat is over she rejects all males with squeals and savage bites. No pair bonding occurs as adult weasels have little to do with each other after mating.
Short and long-tailed weasels generally produce a single litter in the spring. Gestation is 34 -37 days. In poor prey years, no young may survive. In good prey years, the least weasel can breed all year round, even mating again before the current litter is grown. For short and long-tailed weasels the spring molt is an accurate herald of the reproductive season. Litter size is 5 to 7. Weasels do not make their own nests, but commandeer those of rodents and even rabbits. Strangely, short-tailed weasel males impregnate the young before they open their eyes, with the young giving birth the following year. The litters disperse when the young reach 3 - 4 months of age - the females staying close to the nest, but the males travelling long distances to find new territories.
Common and least weasels breed all year and so can adjust their breeding efforts to increased prey volumes almost immediately. In stoats, the combination of delayed implantation and juvenile precocity allows simultaneous mating of adult and young females, which in turn means enormous potential breeding success for dominant males and certain fertilization before dispersal for the young females.
While short-tailed weasels can live to 7 years, any population is made up predominately of first year animals - typically 50 percent. In years of high prey density, the weasel population increases and the number of second year weasels approaches that of first year animals. Weasels are killed by of foxes, coyotes, feral cats, minks and ferrets, plus owls and hawks. Some predators, notably foxes, will kill but not eat them. Research has shown that the black tail tip on stoats and longtails is a classic predator-deflection mark, and that least weasels do not have it because their tails are too short to hold the mark far enough away from their body.
The influential American ecologist Paul Errington believed that the population density of most animals is set by the extent of their preferred habitat. Errington was convinced that predation is more often compensatory (substituting for other causes of mortality) than additive (adding to other causes). Most studies have found little increase in prey with the removal of weasels. The populations of weasels are almost entirely controlled by the density of prey.
Common weasels and stoats were imported into New Zealand for 20 years starting in 1884, to control rabbits on the sheep farms. The Common weasels are now scarce because of the lack of small prey such as mice. Most of New Zealand's loss of birds and other wildlife occurred before this date, with the arrival of the Maori in the 1300's and Europeans in the late 1700's accompanied by rats, cats and dogs. While rats are the primary predator of native animals, stoats kill many yellowheads, kaka, and robins in thee beech forests, and kiwi anywhere.
July 20, 2016
This book appears to go to great lengths to achieve a warm/friendly tone (particularly in the beginning, for example with sections on how weasels are portrayed in literature, children's films, different cultures, etc.) but don't let this fool you – it's a very well researched book with lots of scientific information.
Although the book usually maintains this friendly tone (with easy to follow language), it discusses some complex ideas and findings in a well balanced and analytic way. To give a general impression of the style of the book, I compare it to fictional book X on the same topic.
Book X may tell you the largest weasels are found in North America and this could mean a,b,c,d.
This book presents a chart of weasel measurements, referencing data collected by different researchers in different countries, explains the different measurements that have been used in size determination, includes a detailed discussion, evaluation and analysis on the measurements and methodologies, how the research could be improved in the future, and the ways the results have been interpreted by different people.
In this style, the authors discuss the lives of different species of weasels and stoats (how they live in different places, what they eat, how they hunt, how they breed and reproduce, etc.), their evolutionary origins, their anatomies, their population numbers and how these affect the environment around them as well as the different attitudes and actions people have taken to keep the populations under control, etc.
I imagine this could be an interesting read (and helpful reference book) for anyone interested in researching these animals (or animals in general), for people interested in general scientific methodologies for researching animals, for people involved in either conservation or “pest control” projects, or for people who, like myself, have no scientific background but are interested in the animals.
Because I didn't read the book as a kind of reference book (picking certain topics of interest and only reading through those), but as a whole book, going from beginning to end (since I wasn't really looking for anything in particular), it did at times become a bit tiresome. While I appreciated the careful style of the book and all the information it provided, this style also meant that there was so much information that it got a bit monotonous at times and there were quite a few repetitions throughout the book. But then again, I can understand that it might function better as a reference book. Even so, I personally found many sections very interesting and this made up for some slightly more boring ones :)
Although the book usually maintains this friendly tone (with easy to follow language), it discusses some complex ideas and findings in a well balanced and analytic way. To give a general impression of the style of the book, I compare it to fictional book X on the same topic.
Book X may tell you the largest weasels are found in North America and this could mean a,b,c,d.
This book presents a chart of weasel measurements, referencing data collected by different researchers in different countries, explains the different measurements that have been used in size determination, includes a detailed discussion, evaluation and analysis on the measurements and methodologies, how the research could be improved in the future, and the ways the results have been interpreted by different people.
In this style, the authors discuss the lives of different species of weasels and stoats (how they live in different places, what they eat, how they hunt, how they breed and reproduce, etc.), their evolutionary origins, their anatomies, their population numbers and how these affect the environment around them as well as the different attitudes and actions people have taken to keep the populations under control, etc.
I imagine this could be an interesting read (and helpful reference book) for anyone interested in researching these animals (or animals in general), for people interested in general scientific methodologies for researching animals, for people involved in either conservation or “pest control” projects, or for people who, like myself, have no scientific background but are interested in the animals.
Because I didn't read the book as a kind of reference book (picking certain topics of interest and only reading through those), but as a whole book, going from beginning to end (since I wasn't really looking for anything in particular), it did at times become a bit tiresome. While I appreciated the careful style of the book and all the information it provided, this style also meant that there was so much information that it got a bit monotonous at times and there were quite a few repetitions throughout the book. But then again, I can understand that it might function better as a reference book. Even so, I personally found many sections very interesting and this made up for some slightly more boring ones :)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews