The Ermine: A Weasel By Another Name
By: Dave Zeug
“If they were as big as a bear, it wouldn’t be safe to go in the woods,” Dad said. Those were his comments to his young son after I told him about my first encounter with a weasel at the end of deer hunt.
I’d been sitting at the base of a blown down tree when I first saw the flicker of white in the fallen branches. Seconds later I looked down at my boot, the one with a bit of blood on it from the buck Dad had shot earlier in the day, and saw the tiny carnivore bite of the boot’s hard rubber toe. Realizing he’d literally bitten off more than he could chew, the tiny predator disappeared back into the winter woods.
Weasels are also known by the more appealing name ermine during the winter months when they’re wearing the once valuable pure white coat with a black tipped tail. Of the three types of weasels, the long-tailed, short-tailed and least weasel, the short tailed variety is the most common north of the 45th latitude. Even their Latin name, Mustelum, is appropriate. Mus, meaning mouse, reflects their small stature with short legs, flat and pointed head with a long tail. Telum translates to dart, spear or missile. The unique body shape and coloration gives this predator an advantage during a long, harsh northern winter.
Their ability to maneuver in tight spaces make them excellent rodent hunters.
The widest, and in some ways strongest, part of an ermine is their head. This means they can navigate any hole or burrow their head fits into. If their head makes into a rodent hole of any size, their body is sure to follow. Interestingly, an ermine’s skull, jaw bone and teeth are strikingly similar to Africa’s big cats. The thin canine teeth effectively kill prey with a swift bite at the base of the head, while the other scissor like teeth break the flesh down to be swallowed.
Weasels are not patient hunters that wait for their prey to give them an opportunity to feed. They spend so much of their time burning up energy while investigating every potential area a rodent could hide in, they often eat several times a day during a cold winter. Their long, flexible torso also enables them to literally wrap up a prey animal giving them the needed time to find the neck for a quick kill.
The short-tailed weasel is called an ermine in the winter due to it’s changing into their white coloration. In the spring they revert back to their summer brown color.
In the winter, ermine spend much of their hunting time under the deep layer of snow. This area is called the subnivean climate, the environment between the top of the snow column and the ground below. This is the primary winter home for a shopping list of rodents, primarily mice and voles. They seek out this suspended area to protect them against the cold and most predators, but it doesn’t stop the short tailed weasel that easily navigates in this world that’s invisible to us. Coyotes and fox may take advantage of it by intently listening for movement below the snow line, then leaping into the air and diving into the snow where the sound was heard. Ermine are much more efficient and effective hunters in snow covered environment though.
The ermine’s white winter coat also provides them with a defense system against bigger predators such as raptors. From the sky, a bird of prey’s keen eyesight can pick up an ermine’s movements above the snow line making them vulnerable for an aerial attack. They do have a natural defense system against these attacks though. The winter ermine’s black tipped tail provides for a distraction by focusing an owl or hawk’s attention on the tip of the tail, not on the elongated body, making it likely the raptor will miss their target.
Ermine are quite fearless and tolerant of human activity, but intolerant of rodents, which makes them good neighbors.
While weasels are likely to take songbirds and other small game animals, even domestic fowl at times, their overall value comes from the rodent control duties they perform. A good example of this was the one I saw recently working over, around and through our winter’s wood supply under a three-sided woodshed. I caught a few brief flashes of white, then nothing, so I kissed the back of my hand a couple times to replicate a small rodent. The results were instantaneous. The beautiful white-coated ermine boldly came into sight, curious about where the potential meal was. The fact it was coming from a full-grown man, not a 3-ounce mouse didn’t seem to concern him, as he continued searching the area. After he disappeared, I lured him out several more times before he tired of the game and left, looking for more productive hunting grounds.
There was a time when ermine pelts demanded big money, but not anymore. That’s fine with me. Their rodent control abilities, along with an occasional up close and personal encounter, brightening a long winter’s day is all the compensation I want.
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